


Till Death Do Us Part

by octonaut



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Amputation, Blood and Gore, Death, Drowning, Eye Trauma, M/M, Self-Harm, Torture, Trans Character, Trans Junkrat, Trans Male Character, Violence, eventual hurt/comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-29
Updated: 2016-09-29
Packaged: 2018-08-11 18:02:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 41,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7902397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/octonaut/pseuds/octonaut
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>GIVE US THE OMNICARDIUM OR MAKO RUTLEDGE DIES. It's the message that Junkrat sees on the motel TV, that compels him to drive out into empty farmland and climb aboard the unmanned helicopter that beckons him inside. Little does he know that he's powerless to rescue Roadhog, that he's the one who will be dying.</p>
<p>Again.</p>
<p>And again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

> GIVE US THE OMNICARDIUM OR MAKO RUTLEDGE DIES.

Junkrat blinks. He stares. He manhandles the remote control but the words remain unchanging on the TV screen, white against black.

“Hog, the telly’s gone all funny,” he calls over his shoulder. He jams a finger up his nose and digs around for a bit while he waits for a response but he doesn’t hear any grunts or exasperated sighs from behind the bathroom door. He gives switching back to the news another try, hammers down on a few buttons, but the TV is as unresponsive as his bodyguard. He tosses the remote aside with a noise of frustration.

“Oi, Hog,” he demands, with a great deal less patience. The fucker must be in the bath — likes to ignore him while he’s in the bath.

Junkrat throws his legs over the side of the bed and jumps to his feet with a quiet _whumpf_ , scratches his bare ass as he hobbles over to the bathroom.

“Hoggo,” he says, and his mischievous grin slots into a frown when he pushes the door open. Wasn’t even locked.

The tiny motel bathroom is the mess Junkrat left it the night before, towels spread all over the floor to lazily mop up the water he splashed over the edge of the tub. His tins of paint are still on the counter, his grenades left drying beside them overnight. He wouldn’t have touched those, but Roadhog would have picked up the towels, at least. There’s one half submerged in the toilet bowl, for fuck’s sake.

Junkrat backs out of the bathroom, teeth buried in his lip, something stirring in his gut, and—

“No,” he says, though he can’t stop the restless bouncing of his peg leg. “Nothin’ wrong here. He just stepped out — just stepped out is all he did. Without takin’ his morning piss. Without tellin’ me.”

Everything is fine.

Perfectly fine.

He dives onto the duvet to snoop around in Roadhog’s bedside stash anyway.

He searches through the junk with quivering fingers — quivering in the normal way, definitely not in the _Rat, you’re overreacting and need to calm down_ way. Certainly not. Fingertips brush over emergency bedtime snacks, a very worn and lightly bloodstained pachimari plush, and —

“Scrap gun,” Junkrat says, voice hushed with relief. Then Hog isn’t really gone, hasn’t really left, because Hog leaves a lot of things behind but his gun is never one of them.

But something is missing — missing, missing, missing…

Ah.

“Where’s his hook?”

Junkrat roots around some more, somehow, shifting through the same five things again and again, but the familiar chain hook is nowhere to be found. He hops off the bed, and now his peg leg is really going.

“Went out for some air,” he says too loudly, and smacks himself in the forehead with an insincere laugh. “’Course he did. He loves his air, the silly prick.”

He goes to the front door, pretends not to notice that the long line of bolt and chain locks are already undone, and lets the morning light illuminate him. Probably should’ve put on some pants.

“You out here, Roadie?” He tries to say it like he’s not worried because Roadhog will definitely chew him out for overreacting and not giving him his space. But then he looks down, and he sees, and in his head he hears a thousand unwanted I told you so’s.

Roadhog’s hook and chain lie discarded on the pavement. Roadhog is not here.

Oh.

“Oh.”

He might be in trouble here.

Junkrat scurries back into the room with the hook, takes too long to do up every single lock with useless fingers. He throws on a pair of shorts — puts them on backwards, doesn’t care — because suddenly, this is serious. He squats down in front of the telly, leans in until his long nose prods the glass and the light hurts his eyes, because the words are still there.

> GIVE US THE OMNICARDIUM OR MAKO RUTLEDGE DIES.

“All right, you TV bastards,” he growls. “What’ve you done with him?”

He’s considering throttling the television set when suddenly, the screen changes. The letters flash mere centimeters from his eyes and he scrambles back with a yelp, but then the stars fade from his vision and he’s able to read what they say.

> COME TO COVENTRY.

Followed by a set of coordinates. The text seems to stare back as Junkrat scratches his head, as he wiggles his toes, as he bites into his lip and now he’s starting to rock back and forth —

He jumps to his feet, gives his face a good slap.

“Coventry,” he says, because he knows where that is. He thinks. Possibly. They drove through there at some point, hadn’t they?

Before he can stop himself, he’s yanking all the locks undone and padding barefoot onto the balcony. There’s a maid ducking into one of the rooms further down but he doesn’t even notice her as he grabs the railing and leans over to peer down at the car park.

There it is. Junkrat’s stomach sinks at the sight of it, its sidecar looking like a real piece of scrap compared to the other cars in the lot. That settles it, then.

He’s inside again and now his hands are shaking earnestly, though he doesn’t think he’s overreacting anymore. He trades his shorts for a civilian disguise, hides his scorched hair underneath a baseball cap and jumps into an unshapely pair of jeans. He grabs Roadhog’s oversized backpack and shoves his grenade launcher into it plus a couple of mines and hand grenades. He shoves the last one past his waistband into the crotch of his pants, adjusts, and gives it a satisfied little pat when he’s confident it looks at least slightly dick-shaped. “You makin’ fun of my wanger?” he’ll say to anyone who asks (and oh, how he loves when they ask). They don’t need to know his dick is a grenade.

“Okay,” he says confidently, but it’s not really him saying it. “I can do this.”

But he pauses at the door, backpack slung over his shoulder. He takes a breath, turns back to grab the keys to Roadhog’s chopper.

Right.

Coventry.

 

* * *

 

He’s aware he looks ridiculous driving Roadhog’s giant motorcycle. He knows. He’s dressed like your friendly neighborhood landscaper and riding a chopper from the blazing depths of Australia. He knows, and he’s most certainly relieved when he swerves onto the motorway and zooms out of town, taking the end of the on ramp rail with him and letting his baseball cap billow away in his dust.

On its own, it’s not the most interesting drive. The endless fields are more green than Junkrat’s ever seen in his life and the M6 seems to stretch on in a straight line forever. It’s boring, and boring isn’t good for Junkrat. He shifts on the seat of the bike — shifting, shifting, always sliding around — and his fingers feel so stiff. He needs to move them, but if he doesn’t hold on for dear life he’ll die. His brain is itching and he can’t stop _thinking_ and he despises every horrible thought his mind conjures up. It’s his own personal brand of hell, but… boredom isn’t the only reason he breaks the speed limit all the way to the kidnappers’ coordinates.

He chases them off the M6, into Coventry but not its core, and, to his confusion, down a dirt road. He flexes his taut shoulders, sucks in some air through his teeth, and trucks on, unworried about the chopper. It survived the Outback. A little English dirt won’t even scratch the paint.

The path leads him through a brief wood that blocks the farmland on the other side from the main road. Junkrat cuts the engine, and the place is odd. It’s flat and sprawling here like the radiated ruins of the Outback, but it’s not the same. It’s like being on a different planet, he thinks as a light, cool breeze tousles his hair, as he dismounts the bike and his peg leg sinks not into sand but spongy grass. A different planet where the world’s not trying to kill him, only lull him to sleep, because it’s quiet.

Quiet.

Too quiet.

There is no one here.

Regardless, Junkrat reaches behind him and fishes the frag launcher from his backpack, grateful to have a familiar shape in his hands again. The grenades in the magazine rattle around as he hobbles uneasily away from Roadhog’s bike ( _safety_ ) and toward the only other thing in the endless plains.

The helicopter sits in a flattened patch of grass, dark and unmoving like a sleeping beast. Junkrat stares it down through the sights of his launcher like it’s a pack of dingos, liable to spring to life at any moment. _Don’t shoot the helicopter while you’re standing next to it, you idiot,_ says a suspiciously Hoggish voice in his head but he ignores it. As well as he can ignore a voice in his own head, anyway.

His scavenger instincts kick in as he pokes his head through the side door that was left open, into the meat of the helicopter. There’s no one sitting in the passenger seats, no one up front either, and the thing certainly doesn’t look abandoned. In fact, as he backs out and circles around it like a vulture, he’s pretty sure it’s in perfect condition.

Junkrat steps back, lowers his launcher, and frowns. This isn’t right, he had to have made a mistake somewhere. He checked the coordinates on a borrowed (definitely not stolen) GPS, scribbled down the directions on a ten pound note he’d also borrowed (not stolen) from someone, but this can’t be right. There isn’t anyone _here_.

“Jamison Fawkes,” says a voice, and Junkrat jerks so hard it’s a miracle he doesn’t lob a grenade and obliterate everything nearby.

“Whozzat?” Junkrat demands with only a fraction of the composure he thought he had.

At first, he thinks the voice belongs to an omnic. It’s tinny and impersonal and sets his teeth on edge. But the voice speaks again and this time he’s paying attention. It comes from within the snoozing beast of a machine.

“Please board the helicopter.”

But Junkrat is hesitant to trust any talking machine, and quite reasonably, he thinks.

“Why should I?” he asks with a critical eye.

“Because you want to see Mako Rutledge again.”

He can’t argue with that but it doesn’t mean he’s not willing to try.

“I think I’ve already done enough, don’t you? I got your little notes, I’m playin’ your game. Came out here and everything, didn’t I?” He scowls and jabs the frag launcher at the helicopter. “Where’s Roadhog?”

“If you recall,” the helicopter says, and Junkrat could do without her tone, “we have a trade to make. Mako Rutledge for the omnicardium. We will not release him until you give us its location.”

Right. The omni-thing. Honestly, if Junkrat knew it was going to cause him this much trouble he would have left it in the ruins of the omnium where he found it.

Maybe. Maybe not.

Junkrat chews on his tongue as a handful of thoughts churn about in his head, as he scrutinizes the sleek black machine before him. “You an omnic?”

“No.”

He pauses. “You some kinda talking helicopter?”

“Mr. Fawkes, I am as human as you are. Now please, if we have a deal, board the helicopter.”

This is stupid. This is ridiculous and outlandish and overwhelming and so, so stupid.

 _I,_ Junkrat tells himself reasonably, _am a stupid person._

_But not as stupid as bloody Roadhog who went and got himself bloody captured._

He doesn’t loosen his grip on the frag launcher as he steps up into the helicopter, definitely not as the door closes behind him of its own accord.

“Thank you, Mr. Fawkes,” the woman’s voice says, and he can’t tell where it’s coming from but the pilot and co-pilot’s seats are still empty and fuck, he does not care for this at all.

“Sure thing,” he says like he’s not bothered but he hears himself and hell, did he sound bothered? She probably thought he sounded bothered. Fuck.

The rotors begin to spin, the pilot’s seat is still empty, the helicopter vibrates and hums — hell, those rotors could definitely decapitate someone — the pilot’s seat is _still empty_ —

The grenade he’s packing with shifts uncomfortably against his inner thighs as he forces himself to sit down, clutching his launcher until his knuckles turn white. He could blow up the damn talking helicopter right now. Would be easy, would be fun, would give him a good laugh.

Would probably kill him. Right.

“So, uh,” he says instead, “where are we goin’ exactly?”

She doesn’t respond. Probably ignoring him — like Roadhog does when he’s in the bath.

Junkrat frowns, ends up being so startled by the helicopter finally leaving the ground that he blurts out, “Oi, you even listenin’ to me?”

“Sit tight,” is all the voice says. He supposes he’s glad she didn’t tell him to leave his launcher or backpack behind but he still doesn’t appreciate her tone.

“ _Sit tight_ ,” he mutters, and tries to scowl at everything all at once. He doesn’t like this. He doesn’t like this at all.

His uneasiness only increases tenfold as the voyage commences and he tries to distract himself by looking out the window at the miniature world beneath him. They fly northeast over Sheffield and Leeds, eventually over a grand expanse of flat pastures and tiny villages that are untouched by most of modern technology. Everything looks so tiny and insignificant from up here and it doesn’t help the feeling Junkrat’s struggling with that none of it matters — only this matters now. He just has to get Roadhog back.

The green fields suddenly give way to the endless blue of the ocean and all of a sudden Junkrat feels like he might be sick. He probably would be if he hadn’t forgotten to eat breakfast in his panic. He leans away from the window so fast he nearly gives himself whiplash and sits back, as stiff as a board. Don’t think about it, he tells himself, don’t think about it, but that only makes him think about it. His heart flutters. He can feel his airways tightening — tight, _tighter_ — as if they’re being strangled.

As if they’re clogged with water, briny and harsh. Killing him. Drowning him.

He clenches his teeth until they hurt, squeezes his eyes shut, and keeps as quiet as a corpse for the rest of the journey.

 

* * *

 

“Nearly there, Mr. Fawkes.”

When Junkrat opens his eyes, he finally realizes the gravity of the situation he’s in. He’s used to ramshackle Junker kidnappings and desperate survivalist attacks in the night. This isn’t that. He’s not in the bush anymore.

Directly in front of them, rising out of the water like a long mechanical turtle, is some kind of island in the middle of the ocean. It’s a fortress, an immobile aircraft carrier with a stern-looking complex built atop it. He can’t even begin to count all the antennas he sees shooting into the air, erect like the ears of a Doberman and swaying in the ocean gusts. It’s as if they’re trying to make up for the complete absence of windows but it doesn’t make the place look any less miserable. It still makes Junkrat uneasy, still reminds him of the prison he spent a few horrible weeks in once. The only part of the fortress with any windows is what must be the bridge, and it sits in the center of everything like the prized piece in an art gallery.

“You’re the bloody military?” he blurts, and he hates the smugness she responds with.

“What gave you that idea?”

He can hardly sit still as the helicopter makes its smooth descent over the industrial island, has already jumped to his feet by the time the landing skids hit the helipad. The door opens again ( _finally_ ) and he’s coiled and ready to make a break for it, to wreak havoc on his way to Roadhog and then _get the fuck out_ , and he starts on that plan, at least. But then his feet hit the concrete, backpack slung over one shoulder, frag launcher in his hands, and he stops so suddenly it must look like he ran face first into an invisible wall.

A woman stands before him, as severe as the island he’s found himself trapped on. She watches him as he hastily straightens up — and he’s taller than her, of course he is — but her eyes have a quality that make him feel like he’s not. They’re dark, bottomless as the ocean, and oh, Junkrat despises her immediately. She’s the embodiment of everything he hates, clean and perfect and untouched by hardships, unscarred. The inflicter, not the inflicted. Her silver suit suddenly shimmers as if it’s made from liquid metal, making her look ethereal. Oh, how Junkrat loathes her for it.

“Welcome to Watchpoint Aberdeen,” she says, and he recognizes her voice immediately. The helicopter. “I am N.”

“What kinda name is that?” he says. The little Roadhog in his head slaps him good.

N stares him head on. “What kind of name is Junkrat?”

“’Scuse me? _Somebody_ has shit taste in names,” he jests like he’s not sweating buckets, and grins at the pair of guards blocking the helipad stairs. “Right, fellas?” Maybe they glance at him, maybe they don’t. It’s hard to tell through the helmets. Junkrat’s pretty sure they don’t play along, though. His grin falters and the Roadhog in his head starts throttling him.

“Okay,” he says, and it comes out small.

“You’d like to see Mr. Rutledge, I assume?” N says. That’s enough to perk Junkrat back up. Revitalized, he jabs his frag launcher at her with what he hopes is an intimidating look.

“Yeah, I do. Take me to him!” It’s meant to come out as a threat. He says it like a threat, which is why he finds it odd and not very comforting that N only spares his launcher a mere glance. The guards don’t even flinch.

“Or else,” he adds after a moment, snarling for extra effect.

“If you’d like to see Mr. Rutledge, you’ll have to hand over your weapons,” N says.

Junkrat glances down at his launcher as if confused. “What, this?” He gives it a little wave. “You don’t hafta worry about this, I ain’t gonna use it!”

She stares, unamused.

“It’s harmless, I swear.”

And stares.

“It’s… only a firework launcher?”

Her heavy stare and his worsening need to see Roadhog alive and well eventually leaves him no choice but to slap his frag launcher into the guard’s outstretched hands.

“Fine,” he growls, and feels like a part of his soul has been stolen from him as the guard puts it into a nearby storage container.

But N is still staring. “And the backpack.”

“What backpack?” he tries, but it’s promptly snatched away from him by one of the guards.

“Hey! Watch the hands!”

He tries to keep his composure as N’s eyes scan him from top to bottom. They start at his tangled hair, travel down his oversized hoodie, down, down…

Junkrat holds his breath when her eyes glance over his groin. _That’s right, it’s just me dick_ , he thinks, and he can’t stop the giggle that bubbles out of him. Her eyes snap back up to his and he stops abruptly.

“Very well,” she says. “This way.”

He huffs out a relieved sigh as she turns her back to him and they leave the helipad and its guards behind. He doesn’t get the chance to take a better look around, almost forgets to even try, because suddenly she’s leading him through a bulkhead and into the guts of Watchpoint Aberdeen.

The interior is just as featureless and clinical. N leads him through corridor after corridor, past unmarked doors and an infinite number of blank and windowless walls. The doors are always closed, the spacing between them always the same. There’s no one here but them and his uneven footsteps are too loud in the silence. Every hall is identical and it’s starting to drive Junkrat mad. He was trying to map the place out in his head so he and Roadhog will be able to make a clean escape but it’s all blurring together and he’s biting his lip and he really wishes his short term memory wasn’t so maddeningly short.

He stares at N’s back and her suit glimmers again. She’s doing this to him on purpose — has to be. Must be.

“Oi,” he says, and it’s a shout in the silence. “We there yet?”

“Hmm?” she says, as if she _forgot_. “Oh, yes. Right through here.”

The door to their right suddenly slides open, making Junkrat start. He gulps, squares his shoulders, peers into the room. He’s powerless to stop himself from gasping.

“Hog!” he says, forgetting all about N and scampering into the room. Roadhog is there, he’s there, and Junkrat is so relieved to see him that he just _runs_.

There’s the odd sound of metal and flesh against glass as he runs straight into a thick glass wall.

“Fuck me,” he hisses, and he’s only prodding his tender nose for a second before his hands are on the wall, testing it, cursing it, wondering why the hell it’s even there.

The first window he’s seen in this damn place, he thinks, and it’s ironic enough that it makes him want to laugh. But he doesn’t.

“Hog,” he calls, and gives the glass a good pounding with his metal hand. Roadhog doesn’t even glance in his direction. He’s just standing there, unharmed, but the bastards have taken his gas mask and Junkrat can see that his brow is furrowed and his eyes are positively glued to the door like he’s trying to melt the thing with his mind. Junkrat hammers on the glass with both hands, hard enough to shatter it. But it doesn’t.

“Roadhog!”

Nothing, and Junkrat’s shoulders sag, his heart sinks. It’s like he can’t even see him, let alone hear him.

“There he is,” N says, reminding Junkrat with a jolt of surprise that she was still there. “Alive and unharmed.”

He turns his frown on her but for once, she’s not looking at him. While she watches Roadhog, Junkrat takes his first look around the room. It’s empty and featureless like the rest of this godforsaken island. Small like a storage shed. He realizes with a pang of fear that N shut the door behind her and for a second he feels like a trapped animal, but he tries to talk some sense into himself. She wouldn’t cage herself in here with him. As long as she’s still there, he can get out.

Junkrat, only slightly mollified, returns to his appraisal of the room and notes that Roadhog’s is identical to this one. He can’t figure out why but these twin rooms, cramped and purposeless, make something sickly stir in his gut. A memory wriggles in his mind like a worm in the dirt. Each and every one of the survival instincts he honed back home are telling him to run, to get out, this isn’t right, to _fucking run_.

“This is my half of the deal,” N says, and when she looks at him his brain screams. “Now it’s time for yours.”

He takes a moment to find his voice. “We didn’t make no deal. You forced me to come here.”

“I believe I asked you to board the helicopter and you did so of your own free will.”

“You kidnapped my bodyguard, for fuck’s sake! The hell was I supposed to do?”

“You could have refused.”

“What, an’ just let you crazy people kill him?”

N shrugs. “Plenty of other bodyguards out there willing to offer their services.”

“Un-fucking-likely. This bloke’s one of a kind.”

He’s tired of her face and turns to watch Roadhog’s silent plight instead but he knows by the prickle of invisible knives on his neck that she’s still watching him. And Roadhog still doesn’t know that Junkrat’s here, he’s right _here_ , damn it.

“I’m here to rescue the big lug and he won’t even look at me,” he mutters. “Unbelievable.”

“Fortunately for you,” N continues, having not heard that last bit, “you’re perfectly welcome to have him back. As soon as you tell me what I want to know.”

Right. The omni-thing. The thing that draws endless bounty hunters to his position, that led him to hire Roadhog in the first place, the thing that he’s still got to sell so he can actually pay Hog what he’s owed. Right. That thing.

Junkrat’s eyes flick toward the door, at the glass wall, back at N. How likely is it that the door was unlocked? Not very. In that case, does he have a chance at breaking through it? Probably not. The window into Roadhog’s room, on the other hand…

Junkrat dares to grin, and it scares the little Roadhog in his head right off.

“I’ve got a better idea,” he says. “How’s about Hog and I blow this place?”

He reaches into his pants, pulls out the grenade that’s been nestled between his legs. It’s warm, as if it’s itching to go off.

“But not before I _really_ blow this place, and you lot with it.”

Her expression doesn’t change. He thinks he sees something — the faintest flicker of disappointment — but that’s all, and that scares him.

“And here I hoped we could come to a peaceful agreement,” she says.

Junkrat sputters, feels his temper going. “Oh, like taking Roadhog was peaceful?” He pulls the pin from the grenade, grips the lever against the body.

“Let him out or you and me are gonna end up in pieces,” he says — or means to. It never comes out.

N’s silver suit shimmers — she shimmers — and she flickers out like a TV switched off. Gone. Not even real. A hologram.

Junkrat, alone in the room, lets his jaw drop. His fingers go slack. The grenade slips from his grip before he even remembers he’s holding it. It hits the floor with a deceivingly quiet clank and he stares at it. His hands shake.

3…

He finally realizes why this room fucking petrifies him.

2…

It’s a prison cell.

1.


	2. Chapter 2

Roadhog finally tears his eyes away from the door when a muffled noise goes off somewhere nearby. It sends a faint vibration through the floor that he feels in his toes and he stares at the wall like a predator stares at its prey. It’s the first sound he’s heard, the first sign of life, and he’s hungry for more.

He pads across the cold floor, puts his hands against the wall. The vibration is gone, and when he presses his ear alongside his palms he only hears concrete. If there was anyone there, they’re gone now. Or dead.

He forces himself to shrug it off, smothers his own curiosity. Nothing he can do about it right now. Has to focus on getting out.

Not that glaring at the door has done him any good. He already tried various methods of manhandling and was rewarded with no more than an aching shoulder and throbbing feet. Turns out the door’s as solid as he is and just as stubborn, and doesn’t much appreciate being rammed or kicked. They have a lot in common, Roadhog and this door. _Couple of kindred spirits, you two_ , Junkrat would’ve said as he wiped an imaginary tear from his eye.

Something twists in Roadhog’s gut. _Don’t,_ he thinks.

Back to escaping. Back to the door.

If he still had any of his gear he’s sure he’d be able to best it. Scrap gun would dent it, at least, but he left that at the motel. Hook would’ve made an excellent crowbar. Unfortunately, N and her squadron of faceless puppets were very thorough with him and left him with nothing but his sagging overalls. They took his gas mask, forced him to go barefoot — even denied him his signature license plate codpiece. Must have thought he’d pose a threat with it. They weren’t wrong. He probably could’ve used it to pry the door open and decapitate the first unlucky soul he came across.

So, unarmed but unharmed, he’s been staring. At the door. Waiting to murder the first bitch that walks through. He’s got it all planned out in his head: Get them in a chokehold, interrogate, snap their fucking neck, take their weapon, get out. Make sure he leaves this place in ruins.

But no one ever walks through.

He hasn’t seen a single living soul since N ushered him in here like some kind of captive animal she brought back from the hunt — but then again, he doesn’t consider holograms to be “living souls” so she doesn’t really match his criteria. He has no way of knowing if she even truly exists in the flesh somewhere, watching from afar like some kind of false god; if this is how he goes, like a wild boar trapped in a cage; if N is a woman of her word.

If Junkrat is still alive.

Roadhog closes his eyes, lets out a long huff through his nose. Told himself he wouldn’t concern himself with that until he gets out of here. Told himself he wouldn’t think about it.

He followed her demands, boarded that helicopter and let it bring him all the way out here to this godforsaken rock in the middle of the ocean. Nevermind what Junkrat’s going to do about it, Roadhog can get himself out of this mess. She said she would leave Junkrat unharmed as long as Roadhog complied.

But, of course, there was always the possibility that she lied.

He told himself he wouldn’t fucking think about it.

But he thinks about it.

 

* * *

 

His home was on fire. Australia burned under the shadow his hands cast and he could only watch, chained to the sun, as his people melted below him. Because of him.

“Help us, Mako,” they cried. He tried. He did. He was drowned by the tears in his eyes as he reached down for them. His friends, his family, his daughter.

His fingertips ghosted across her shoulder and she burst apart at every seam, splashing his face with gore.

The world lurched around him as Roadhog woke. Heart pounding, lungs shriveled and dry. Thick fingers strangling the sheets pooled around his legs. A quiet night ruptured by his every rasping breath.

Not real. A dream.

 _Real,_ he thought, _just not right now._

He lifted a hand to his forehead and pawed the sweat-soaked hair out of his eyes while he waited for his heart to calm, but it was taking its damn time. His racing mind eventually slowed to a jog and the burning hellscape of Australia’s omnium slowly faded away. Raging fires were put out and darkened to become the soft shadows of a dark motel room. He breathed — wheezed — and waited for reality to return to him.

The bundle of blankets by his thigh suddenly squirmed and murmured something, giving him a much needed distraction. He sat up as carefully as he could manage, unsure if the bed or his back gave the louder whine, and pinched the edge of the blankets between two fingers. Peeling them back unearthed a snoozing Junkrat, lax-faced with his nose all pressed up and squished against Roadhog’s thigh. His arm was hooked around Roadhog’s knee, his hair an absolute travesty, and Roadhog had to permit himself a moment among all the drama to wonder how the hell the kid had even ended up that far down the bed.

 _Idiot,_ he thought, and smiled.

But his smile faltered when he had to choke back a cough, when he wheezed again, and his mind flashed back to the fires of his dream ( _not a dream_ ). The blood. The gore. Something wet dripped down his face and he swiped instantly at it, expecting his fingers to come back red—

Sweat. Just sweat.

The walls began to close in on him anyway. Suffocating. Dark. Needed to get out.

He pried Junkrat’s hand off his knee as carefully as he could, finger by finger, not wanting to wake him — but one didn’t survive the bush by being a heavy sleeper. Junkrat bolted up like he was spring-loaded, one eye open and the other only half, a line of drool oozing from the corner of his mouth.

“Whuzuh?” he said.

Roadhog was still gripping his hand and he had to fight the temptation to kiss it, to get Junkrat all excited and wake him up even more.

“Go back to sleep,” he rumbled instead, in the most soothing voice he could muster right now. So naturally, it wasn’t soothing at all, but he watched as it lulled Junkrat back anyway, as his eyelids grew heavy and he sunk back down into the blankets like a stone. Roadhog rubbed his thumb along those knobbly knuckles and their raised scars until he saw the signs that Junkrat was asleep again. The urge to stay here with him was strong, to lie back down and let Junkrat know he was safe, to be safe, but much stronger than that was the urge to _breathe_.

Roadhog slowly eased himself off of the bed. It groaned as he went and he paused to make sure Junkrat hadn’t woken up again. When all was quiet once more, he threw on his trousers, grabbed his chain and hook from beside the bed without even thinking about it. It helped him breathe a little better, made him feel heavier in a world that was trying to float away. The gas mask made him feel more or less like himself again when he pulled it on over his head, even though the straps got a little tangled in all his loose hair. He tried to minimize the jingling of chains as he unlocked the door, tried to become a ghost as he stepped outside into the yellow light of the balcony.

The frigid English air nipped at his bare chest as he padded out into the night, calloused feet unharmed by the rough pavement of the balcony. Yes, it was cold as he rested his forearms across the railing and the metal against his skin was colder still, but it was fresh and sharp and breathable unlike the murk inside the room. He allowed himself a few silent minutes to simply breathe, and the night was filled with his rasping as it eventually became wheezing, as it eventually became his regular troubled breathing after that.

The light above him was like a spotlight on this darkest of nights but the motel was a rundown little piece of shit on the edge of town, bordered on one side by a pothole-plagued road and a patch of urban forest on the other. The trees rustled quietly in the wind, a lullaby for the small handful of cars slumbering in the car park below. Roadhog found solace in the sight of his motorcycle, a shark among fish. His little piece of home.

The stink of a cigarette wafted through the filters of his gas mask and burned his nose, and he hardly had to look to know he wasn’t alone, but he glanced down the balcony anyway. The smoker in question was a woman about his age, armed with nothing but the bored look about her and the nightgown that hung down below her knees, billowing in the breeze like a curtain. One hand clamped down on a puttering cigarette and the other lazing around in her pocket. Could be anything in there, Roadhog thought automatically, though he couldn’t make out the form of anything remotely gun-shaped behind the soft fabric. He hadn’t checked the time upon waking but knew it was well into the night — hadn’t expected anyone else to be out here.

She looked suddenly in his direction, their gazes locked, and her eyes were as dark as the night.

She nodded in greeting, Roadhog twitched his head, and that was that. They looked away from each other, gazed out across the darkened car park, and said not a word more. Perfectly normal — that is, if Roadhog had been in any way normal. She hadn’t gone running at the sight of him, had barely spared him a glance. Treated him as if he wasn’t five hundred pounds heavy and armed with a nail-studded hook. Either she was pitifully stupid… or she was dangerous. It was reason enough to keep an eye on her.

She must have noticed his occasional glances — not sure how since the mask concealed his eyes — because eventually, she turned her whole body toward him, propped herself up against the rail, and smirked.

“I can’t tell if you’re a biker or a butcher,” she said. Her accent was posh and annoying, which came as something of a surprise considering the dump he’d found her in.

Roadhog shrugged. “Bit of both.”

He didn’t particularly like the way her eyes scanned down his chest, down to his stomach. Like she was browsing the deli.

“That’s an interesting tattoo.”

He only snorted at that.

She watched him for a moment as her cigarette hung from her fingers, uninteresting and long forgotten in light of her guest. Eventually, she stopped scrutinizing him and gazed down over the car park again. The silence didn’t last long. She pointed with her cigarette, her other hand still nestled in her pocket.

“That one yours?” she said, and Roadhog followed her line of sight down to the place where his chopper slept.

He grunted, but the woman wasn’t Junkrat, and she didn’t speak his language.

“Is that a yes?”

“Might be,” he rumbled, barely.

She smirked again, and Roadhog didn’t care for it. “Bit of a piece of work, that sidecar.”

Yeah, well. So was the guy that had built it.

“You’re here with someone then?”

And he did not like where this was going.

“Didn’t come out here to talk,” he said.

“Of course not. Neither did I, but here we are.”

He shot her a sideways glare that he knew she couldn’t see, because if she’d seen it she wouldn’t have been grinning like that.

“Not the nicest place you could have brought someone to, I must say,” she said before giving him a knowing look. “Though it is private, I’ll give you that.”

He refused to even look at her at this point.

“Away from the main road,” she continued, “hidden by trees. Not many people here, either, which means not many witnesses to take care of.”

And… he _really_ didn’t like where this was going.

“Could be anything in those trees,” she said, and something in her voice changed.

He dared to glance at her. She was staring at him straight through the mask as if he wasn’t even wearing one, her smirk fallen away and the mischievous glint gone from her eyes. She was suddenly stony, like a human carved from slate, and the soft nightgown looked markedly  _wrong_ on her, like all her edges were liable to shred the thing apart. It was like she’d been switched out for someone else when he’d taken his eyes off her — this woman looked like she hadn’t smiled a day in her life.

“You’re currently surrounded by six snipers,” she said. “If I or any of my colleagues release our triggers, the men I’ve had infiltrate your motel room will kill Jamison Fawkes.”

Roadhog couldn’t stop his eyes from shooting out toward the woods, the darkness between branches. He said nothing, absolutely fucking nothing, but she sensed his doubt anyway. The hand in her pocket finally came out, revealing her fingers clamped down around a small device. Her thumb was pressed firmly into a button at the top, and Roadhog was forcefully reminded of the treasured little detonators Junkrat loved to make. It triggered an unpleasant jolt in his gut and he was glad to feel the first wave of apathy his brain dished out in times like these.

“What do you want?” he said.

“You have to ask? We want the omnicardium.” Something flashed in her eyes — something hungry. “The soul component of Australia’s omnium. We want the Heart.”

He could have guessed. It was all anyone wanted these days, for one reason or another. This was easily the most organized attempt to steal it anyone had ever made, however.

“Could just buy it from us,” he tried — mostly just to test the water, but her answer surprised him.

“We tried to. We offered to pay Mr. Fawkes whatever he wanted. We were told it’s not for sale.”

Roadhog frowned. That wasn’t right. He and Junkrat never refused someone’s offer, always tried to haggle and extort their way to bigger numbers before deciding it just wasn’t enough. They never refused anyone outright, and Roadhog knew, because Junkrat always brought the business transactions straight to him.

“Bullshit,” he said, couldn’t stop it from becoming a growl.

The woman gave him what he suspected was supposed to be an appeasing gesture. “We mean you no harm, and we certainly don’t want to end Mr. Fawkes’s life. All we want is the omnicardium.”

“What do you need a Heart for?” he said. Had to stall for time. Had to think of a way out of this. “You building your own omnium? Making your own omnic army?”

“I think you’ve misunderstood who we are,” the woman said. “We wish to keep the peace, Mr. Rutledge, and keep the peace we shall. At any cost.

“Now, as for what we need from _you_.” The poise she regarded him with was about as stoic as a large vat of acid, and just as reassuring. “Care to take a walk with me?”

He heard it in his head again and again. _What we need from_ you. This wasn’t over. Roadhog wasn’t the end of this.

The gears in his head spun madly. They knew they couldn’t force him physically, were trying to manipulate him instead. Armed, had his hook, but no gun — couldn’t take out six snipers either way. Definitely couldn’t get to their triggers in time. If he so much as twitched in her direction, they’d all let go. Would probably shoot him too. Definitely shoot Junkrat.

Did she even have mercs in the room or was she bluffing?

Was he willing to risk it?

He was debating holding her hostage, charging at her and nestling her soft neck in the crook of his hook before any of the snipers could react, when her nightgown suddenly shimmered. No, not just that — every piece of her, as if she was just a trick of the light. Roadhog felt each of his plans fall through his fingers like sand, felt something worryingly like despair cut through the apathy and take hold of his heart with cold, shriveled fingers.

She was a hologram. Not physically here. Couldn’t stop her trigger from going off no matter what. Hopeless. Couldn’t win. He’d already lost.

 _So what?_ said a dark voice in his head, slow and black like tar. _Let Junkrat die. Get the fuck out of here._

Roadhog rasped out a breath. The trees rustled in the wind like they were snickering at him.

“Where we walking to?” he uttered. Her mouth didn’t smirk but he saw it in her eyes.

“Good man, Mr. Rutledge,” she said. “I know of a nice little place just down the road. Let’s head out, shall we? Oh, and leave the weapon behind. You won’t be needing it.”

His fingers clamped down around his chain and hook until they throbbed.

_Find her._

She held his gaze easily, if only because she wasn’t really there.

_Tear her in two and make them all watch._

A slow breath left him, quiet as the wind. He dropped the chain and hook at the foot of the door, and the clatter was louder than anything. He walked with her. He didn’t look back.


	3. Chapter 3

The world is TV static and cotton, fuzzy and it’s all going everywhere at once and, God, Junkrat regrets opening his eyes. Mistake, big mistake. They’ve replaced his body with a big, stupid bag of bricks, he knows they have, because it’s too heavy and he can hardly move and he actually feels kind of ill, if he’s honest with himself. Not going to vomit, though. He’s fine. This is perfectly acceptable because he’s been through worse. He just has to open his eyes. Slowly now…

It’s too bright, like staring into the sun, and it sets a dagger bouncing around in his head. He doesn’t shut his eyes again, just squints and takes the brunt of it. There’s some kind of light hanging above him and when his eyes grow accustomed to seeing again, he thinks he can make out the alien shape of some kind of metal contraption hanging above the lamp. He lifts a hand to his forehead to block out some of the light—

Except he doesn’t, because his arm appears to be locked in place. He frowns. His head is still swimming but he’s pretty sure he’s not imagining the steel cuffs pinning his forearm and bicep to the armrest of this chair he’s woken up in.

Oh. Well, that’s new. He doesn’t think he remembers this at all. Why would he sit here? Better question: Why would he, survivalist extraordinaire, doze off here? Seems like a horrid place to settle down, all stiff and metal and not comfortable in the slightest, he’s realizing now. The hell was he thinking? He tries to remember but his brain feels like a swamp, goopy and slow, dragging his trains of thought down into the mud. Trying to recall his last memory feels like trying to clamp his hands around a particularly slimy fish and all it really gets him is another layer to his headache. He grimaces and tilts his head back, but that just gets him a faceful of this miniature sun that’s hanging over him and he hisses out a hoarse curse.

The room he’s in is familiar somehow, cramped and bare and devoid of windows — devoid of anything, really. More slimy memories twist through his outstretched fingers, uncatchable, like itches he can’t scratch. He can only see straight ahead but that’s no skin off his back because he doubts there’s anything interesting behind him anyway. There’s a thick metal door directly across from him that he hardly notices because his eyes are glued to his right, to the wall that’s absolutely splattered with blood. Most of it has already dribbled down to the floor, forming an oozing puddle of guts and gore that’s beginning to trickle dangerously close to his chair. It’s a deep, vivid red… which means it’s fresh.

“Oh, that’s nice,” he mutters to himself, hoarse. So goddamn hoarse. The hell’s wrong with him? “Real nice decor they’ve got here. Love what they’ve done with the place.”

But if he’s honest with himself, he doesn’t actually care for it. Rather wants to leave, actually.

He tries to get up, forgets about the cuffs around his arms. They yank a frustrated noise out of him — not their fault, he’s mostly frustrated with himself — and he finally discovers the cuff around his ankle when he tries and fails to kick his legs in irritation. He looks down to swear at it and—

“These ain’t my trousers,” leaves his mouth, quiet and confused.

In fact, if he’s getting technical, they aren’t his undies. Mainly because he doesn’t make a habit of wearing undies but also because the few dunders he does own are tattered and nasty little things while the boy shorts on his hips now are white and immaculate. Not a single hole or loose string. Definitely not his even though they’re a perfect fit, which leads him to the next glaring issue. His eyes travel down over the flat expanse of his groin.

“Shit, where’s me grenade?”

The second the words leave his mouth, he finally remembers with a bang like an explosion in his head. The helicopter, N, the prison island she’d called Watchpoint Aberdeen. Roadhog, trapped somewhere in a cell of his own.

And oh yeah, the fact that his own packing grenade had gone off right at his feet.

“Guess I dropped the bomb on that one.”

He almost laughs, but something frightened and morbidly curious in him makes him look at the gore-splattered wall again. That’s a lot of blood… that’s _really_ a lot. Like, a whole body’s worth. He knows because he’s seen it before in the aftermath of his explosive escapades, in Roadhog’s violent and admittedly attractive rampages. His hand grenades aren’t even the most deadly tool in his arsenal but they still have the capacity to turn a person into chunks, and yet… here he is, alive and well. Plenty of blood still left in him, probably, and he doesn’t think he’s hurt in any way — which makes this all the more confusing, actually, because he definitely blew it back there. He should be dead — so dead that all the Junkers back in Junkertown ought to be celebrating without even knowing why. But he’s alive, and that makes something itch in his head and crawl through his stomach. Should be dead but he’s perfectly fine. That sets off alarms in his brain.

The alarms start to scream because he’s been shaken awake by all of this and the fog has left his thoughts and something is wrong wrong wrong and he looks down one more time.

His prosthetics are gone. Worse than that are the rings of metal and nerve connectors that he had installed at the end of his stumps, that should be hardwired and melded into his fucking flesh, because those are gone too. Junkrat stares down at his missing limbs, his mouth gone dry, because his prosthetics are gone and so is his ability to even be compatible with them.

_How?_

“Welcome back, Mr. Fawkes.”

Junkrat yelps, tries to leap a mile into the air but is held back by his restraints. He shoots a sizzling glare at N, whose holographic image has just appeared before him. She’s as soulless as ever and just as shimmery and it really makes him wish he’s wearing more than someone else’s pants.

“Oi, I’m not exactly decent, y’know,” he snaps, trying to sound coy but it doesn’t really come out the way he hopes. “You coulda knocked.”

“So sorry to startle you,” N says, but her face doesn’t change and he’s pretty sure she doesn’t mean it. “I trust you’ve come back to us the way you left? Your motor skills are functioning to your liking?”

He puts on a fake smile. “Oh yeah, my motors are great. I especially like the cuffs, that’s a real nice touch.” Then the smile is gone. “The fuck did you do with me arm and leg? You think that’s gonna stop me from tearin’ you a new arsehole, y’never been more wrong in your life!” He thrashes against the restraints for emphasis. “Don’t think I’m helpless just ‘cause I’m short a couple of limbs!”

N’s hand floats up to her heart as if offended. “Certainly not, Mr. Fawkes. I’ve been following your work. I know you’re a capable man.”

She leans in, puts them eye to eye, and up close he can see the quivering scan lines that mark her as an illusion.

“No,” she says, “you’re helpless because I’ve made you so.”

She lets him mull that over as she backs off, leaving Junkrat battling with a sour taste in his mouth and a bead of sweat forming on his temple.

“In any case,” she continues, “the loss of your prosthetics was your fault, not mine. That little stunt you tried to pull did kill you, unfortunately. We were able to bring you back but your arm and leg were destroyed in the blast. Our technology only works on flesh and blood, you see.”

He can’t muster any sadness for his missing limbs right now. One thing at a time, says his throbbing brain, because surely, he must have misheard her. Must have something in his ears, like bits of shrapnel or something.

“Bring me back?” he repeats, and can’t stop the skeptical giggle that comes out of him. “You mean like, from the dead? Shit, mate, dunno how to tell you this but I think you might be crazier than I am. Good on ya.”

“Anything is possible through innovation. I expected you of all people to believe in that.”

Her gaze drifts down to where his peg leg should be and he understands the sentiment behind it. She’s not the first one to suggest it. Nobody had expected him to survive after losing his arm, especially not after losing his leg, but he had. He built himself new limbs and survived, hired a bodyguard and _survived_. The power of innovation, he supposes with a grimace.

“It helps that we have an extremely talented doctor working for us here. In fact, I do believe you’ll be meeting her shortly.”

“Okay, hang on — first of all, I ain’t meeting no doctor. Second of all—” He stops paying attention to what he’s saying, just lets his mouth run, because he doesn’t really have a second of all. He feels like he should, but the only thought running through his head is _impossible impossible impossible_ and now he’s looking down at his stumps, at their perfectly sealed scars. Should be all technological, all scrap metal and nerve connectors like oversized, multifaceted sockets but they aren’t — not anymore. Perfectly sealed. Impossible.

Impossible that he had been brought back from the dead.

His eyes turn toward the gore-splattered wall of their own accord and something unpleasant stirs in him, prickling like a tight electric knot in his chest. _Impossible_. The blood is still oozing, thickened by time and starting to brown, but he could dip his toes in it now if he tried to. So close. Still fresh. _Impossible_. He thinks he sees scorch marks beneath the chunks of flesh.

“You couldnt’a cleaned the place up before having guests?” his stupid mouth blurts, and he laughs only because he can’t stop himself. It bubbles out of him like vomit.

“I’m your host, not your babysitter,” N says. “You’re old enough to clean up your own messes.”

He stiffens. He’s really beginning to dislike how she banters back. She’s as stony as ever but there’s a wit to her voice that’s sharper than his, quicker than his. He’s been captured before, loads of times, and he knows how it’s supposed to go. He cracks a joke and they sweat, lose their cool, hit him. He can take the blows, can stand to lose a few teeth, but they aren’t supposed to banter back. They aren’t supposed to beat him at his own game.

“Or did your mother not teach you any manners?”

“Never did learn much in the Outback about them,” he says, playing off his worries with a laugh. Trying to, anyway. “Or anything, really, apart from bombs. Learned plenty about those. I’m mostly self-taught though, I’ll have you know. Learned the basic stuff from some bogan when I was just a tyke, but the rest—”

 _You’re babbling,_ rumbles a familiar voice in his head and he clamps his mouth shut mid sentence.

N acts as if he hadn’t said a word of it, and that brings a flush to his cheeks.

“Where did you learn to read?”

Junkrat blinks. “Eh? Whatchu wanna know that for?”

“Curiosity, Mr. Fawkes. The Outback is a lawless place but you understood our messages just fine. I almost didn’t expect you to.”

“Oh.” He tries not to swell with pride, has to remind himself he’s still strapped to this damn chair by cuffs that are actually starting to rub him raw, now that he thinks about it. “Well, me mum didn’t teach me manners but she did teach me some things before she went and died. Didn’t go to no school, if that’s what you’re askin’. They’re just preppin’ you for institutionalization, if you ask me.” He nods sagely.

“Did she teach you how to count as well?”

Junkrat blinks again. “Sorry?”

“I’m asking if your mother taught you how to count.”

“I’m crippled, not deaf.” He frowns at her. “Are you takin’ the piss outta me?”

“Of course not.”

“You’re takin’ the bloody piss outta me.”

“Curiosity, Mr. Fawkes.”

“But where’s this goin’?”

“Humor me.”

He shrinks under her all-encompassing gaze. “’Kay,” he says uneasily.

“Thank you,” she says, and fuck, there’s that grin in her eyes again, the one that doesn’t touch her mouth.

Something shifts overhead, glints in the overbearing light of the lamp above, and Junkrat dares to look up even though it momentarily blinds him. The metal contraption he noticed upon waking is lowering down, down, and it saps the moisture right out of his mouth, leaves his tongue bone dry. It looks like something out of a horror movie, a big mishmash of surgical tools all tangled together, branching outward from the same rotating core. Junkrat sees scalpels, needles — a whole slew of other things he can’t put a name to and doesn’t care to. The core is twisting, pivoting, and he can only stare, hypnotized, until it eventually stops. It’s chosen a pair of shining metal pliers.

“Mr. Fawkes,” N says, and he hates how soft her voice has become. “Count with me.”

The metal arm reaches down. The pliers lightly grasp his index finger, but not so lightly that the grooves don’t chip into the black varnish on his fingernail.

“One.”

He can’t bring himself to say anything, silenced by the quiet whirring of the mechanism as it releases his index finger. As it moves toward the next one, he knows N is controlling it even though her hologram stands perfectly still. It moves with her voice like it’s an extension of her, like she’s wearing a glove — only the glove is a big horrible metal thing with prongs and knives for fingers. He chokes out a giggle, wishes he could stuff his knuckles into his mouth.

“Two,” N says, and the pliers caress his middle finger.

“Oi,” he says with a nervous grin, “what’s this about then?”

“Three.”

“’Course I can count, who can’t count these days? Makin’ bombs actually requires a lot of mathematical knowhow, y’know.”

His little finger is caught in the steel trap next.

“Four.”

“I,” he says, falters, has to start again. “I’m actually pretty damn good at chemistry too, if I do say so myself. Ripper, even! I— it’s—”

“Five.”

Junkrat winces, expecting the worst — but his thumb is only met with the same gentle grip as all his other fingers. He slumps back in the chair with an exhale.

“You, uh,” he says with a tense giggle, “you had me goin’ for a second there.”

“Did I?” N says, almost as if surprised. “I apologize. That wasn’t my intention.”

“Oh, no worries. Hog’s always tellin’ me I’ve got an overactive imagination. Says I’m always jumpin’ to conclusions.”

“You don’t say? What a coincidence. That’s my favorite quality in a person.”

N smiles. It hits Junkrat like a punch to the stomach.

“Let’s try it backwards now, shall we?

“Five.”

The pliers clamp down on his index finger again and wrench it all the way back. The crack rings out like a gunshot — he feels it in his spine — and he cries out, jerks away, but that only makes the cuffs cut deeper into his skin. When he looks down, his knuckle is flush against the back of his hand.

And, oh God, it hurts.

“What the fuck?” he cries.

N is not smiling anymore.

“Where is the omnicardium?” she demands, but Junkrat’s brain is working against him now and he doesn’t recognize the word at first.

“The what?”

“The Heart of the omnium. Where is the Heart?”

Junkrat opens his mouth but the machine still has its grip on his sagging finger and it starts to twist…

“Shit,” he says, thrashing uselessly against the chair. “Stop— stop it!”

“The sooner you comply, the sooner this will end. You are in control of your own fate.”

It’s still twisting — his skin is starting to tear and he can see the splotches of blood blooming underneath it — he can _hear_ it, the wet ripping of his finger being slowly torn off—

“You are in control,” N says. “Think, Mr. Fawkes. What comes before five?”

He grits his teeth, swallows a scream. “Four, you bitch—”

He gasps as the machine releases him. Wants to shriek as it moves on to his middle finger. It snaps it back like he’s made out of twigs and his back arches out of the chair, his teeth boring into his lip and drawing blood.

_Don’t scream._

“The Heart, Mr. Fawkes.”

“You just want mine ‘cause you ain’t got your own. Piss off.”

The metal arm twists violently without warning. His whole body shudders as his finger is nearly torn off his hand.

“Three!” he yelps.

“You’re running out of numbers,” N says. The corners of her mouth keep twitching like she’s trying not smile. It makes the pain disappear long enough for Junkrat to bare his teeth at her in a quivering animal grin.

“Also running out of fingers, mate,” he says, even manages a chuckle. “Might be news to—”

The machine’s metal fingers find their next target. The whir of metal joints. Clamp. _Crack_.

“That didn’t count,” he shrieks.

She stares at him head on. “My mistake.”

It’s to his simultaneous fear and relief when she lets him stew like that for a moment. Beads of sweat are forming on his forehead, will start rolling down his face any second. His shaking is really starting to ramp up now and he tries to resist it but it’s like someone’s latched onto him from behind just to jostle him around. He makes the mistake of looking, sees his only hand mangled on the armrest. It’s sitting in a puddle of his own blood and fluids like he’d dipped it into the rotors of a helicopter. It makes him suck in a breath, makes the walls around him waver dreamily. His arm rattles in its cage like its trying to shake the pain off but that only ends up amplifying it. White hot fire is shooting up his arm and into his shoulder, cruel and relentless — but not as cruel and relentless as N’s eyes, ever on him like a pair of spotlights.

“I can wait,” she says, and he would like nothing more than to kill her, to snap each of _her_ fingers off and stomp on them until they turn to mush.

“We’re gonna be here a while, then,” he grinds out. “I ain’t givin’ you the Heart.”

“You will. One way or another.”

Junkrat glares at her — truly _glares_ at her, jowls quivering like he’s starving for the taste of her throat.

“One,” he says. The pliers mangle his thumb, snap the bone in two, and he cringes horribly. But he doesn’t take his eyes off N. Refuses to give her the satisfaction.

She doesn’t care at all, and that lights a fire in him.

“Well done, Mr. Fawkes,” she says, like a professor at the end of a lesson. “How are you feeling?”

_Don’t look at your hand, don’t look again, don’t look—_

He grins crookedly. A bead of sweat drips down his nose. “Peachy.”

“Excellent. I have one last question for you before you’re free to go. Are you ready?”

“As I’ll ever be.”

“What is less than one?”

Junkrat pales. He knows he does. He feels something drain out of him as if it’s all leaking out through the ruins of his fingers. He doesn’t want to answer — doesn’t have to, clamps his mouth shut, won’t say it, he won’t say it—

“Zero,” N says.

A serrated blade shoots down from above like a guillotine, slices straight through the skin of his wrist. It buries itself in his flesh with a wet crunch.

_Don’t scream, Jamie._

But he screams.

God, does he scream.

The metal arm seesaws, grinding the serrations further into him. Blood spurts forth and he _writhes_ as it twangs through his nerves and sends shockwaves up his arm, makes his body spasm against its restraints. The blade stutters when it finds bone, sends awful tremors through his teeth before backing out of his flesh with a squelch and drawing back into the air.

“Fuck you,” he shrieks, and he’s back in the bush, fighting for his life no matter the cost. “You think I need hands? Don’t need no fuckin’ hands, mate, I’m Jamison fucking Fawkes! I’ll tear you apart with my fuckin’ teeth if I have to—”

The blade chops down again. Something wet ( _something red_ ) splashes his face. The blade saws into him and it’s a thousand nails against a thousand chalkboards and he must be screaming again because his throat feels suddenly raw. Through muscle and nerves and, oh, there goes an artery, and Junkrat hears himself say _Couldn’t you pricks have brought a sharper fucking saw_ and he hears himself laughing. Just laughing. Because he doesn’t know what else to fucking do. After a while, it’s all that comes out. Doesn’t even sound like him, too screechy and high-pitched and wet. Can’t be him then, must be someone else. Whoever they are, they’re whinging up a right storm. He feels a little sorry for them.

N waits for him to quiet down, for his screams to peter out until he’s just a shaking, whimpering mess. The mechanical arm returns to its home in the air and leaves the stump of Junkrat’s wrist trembling in a thick, oozing puddle of its own gore. His severed hand fell off the armrest and out of sight, but not out of mind. He can’t stop his leg’s erratic spasms and his toes keep brushing against something calloused and scarred. Still warm. He’s going to be sick.

“That will be all for today,” comes N’s voice through the fog in his brain. She must have messed with his ears too because it takes him a moment to understand her — must have messed with his eyes because everything’s gone fuzzy.

 _Like Hog’s back_ , he thinks. He tries to laugh. It comes out as a whimper.

N is still there. He wishes she wasn’t.

“Think about what I asked you,” she says, and he’s still lucid enough to hear the farewell in it.

He doesn’t say it but he hears it in his voice anyway, a mewling plea: “Wait!” It’s a rasp, and it lights his wrist up. “Wait — you can’t just leave me here!”

She deems him unworthy of a reply. In the blink of an eye, the image of her is gone. He’s alone. The room reeks of blood — of him.

And shit, is he everywhere.

He should be used to this. Fuck, _fuck_ , why isn’t he used to this? Twice before he’s lost his limbs and it’s done nothing to prepare him for the third time. He’s just as helpless, and blood — his blood — is everywhere. How could one body ever hold so much of it, let alone lose it? He feels it spilling out of him like his wrist is a faucet and someone cranked the tap all the way up. It’s going to drain him dry until he withers away in the heat of the Outback, and the thought makes the world sway before him. He’s shaking, trying to rock, but the cuffs around his limbs are unforgiving and sharp and God, they’re cutting him, and he’s stuck, stuck, stuck stuck stuck—

“Just gonna let me die,” he breathes, and fails to choke back all the fear that rides out on those words. Just going to let him bleed out. Slow and painful and stuck, stuck, stuck. No relief until his body finally gives out on him, after everything he’s been through. Nothing’s going to kill him but himself. The world swims, and his vision swims with it.

“Had it comin’,” he says. “Lose a limb, it’s fifty fifty. Can’t win every time. Shouldn’t be surprised… Had it comin’…”

No hands. Junkrat stares down at his arms even though they’re twisting this way and that with the rest of the room and his lungs are starting to shrivel up. No hands. Not a single one. Not even a fingernail left behind. Not a problem. Plenty of things he can still do with his foot.

He can still get around. Can’t very well get a real move on without his peg leg, but he can make do.

He… he can kick — fight back swinging and biting. Get someone in the ‘nads, chomp an ear off.

But can he work his tools with just one foot? Hold the wrenches and wire cutters between two toes and fashion himself a new pair of hands?

He doesn’t think he can, and it hurts.

Can’t fix himself. Can’t get out of this mess. No hands. Not even one. Can’t. _Can’t_. Stuck.

But he still has his sense of humor. Still has that genius, frazzled, stupid, useless fucking brain rattling around in his noggin. He can get out of this. He’ll do it, too, no matter what they take from him.

“Look, Hog,” he says weakly, to no one, and smiles. “No hands.”

He laughs.

It hurts.

Roadhog. Big, warm, soft, safe Roadhog. Junkrat will never feel his fingers running through thick graying hair again. Will never feel the catch of Roadhog’s stubble under his fingertips. Will never have giggles drawn out of him by the tickle of scarred lips against his knuckles.

A choked sob finally tears its way out of him and it feels like he’s being strangled.

The door opens suddenly and he sucks it all back in, shuddering from the effort of it. He’s furiously shouldering the wetness from his eyes when he hears a sound he forgot existed — footsteps — when he sees someone, physical and real and really _there_ , come into the room with him.

It’s not N. Where N is like stone, this woman is smooth and slow like the rolling sand dunes of some foreign shore. Her bright blue eyes are framed by tired lines, her thin lips drawn in a frown. Maybe Junkrat has already died; an angel has come for him.

Her hand floats toward him like a cloud on the breeze and he tries to twist away, wringing more blood from his severed wrist. He growls at her like an animal — he doesn’t think he’s done that in a long time — and when she doesn’t turn away he nips at her fingers. She draws her hand back, trains an imploring stare on him.

“Please, I need you to relax,” she says, and he can’t quite put a finger on where her accent is from. Russia? Germany? Somewhere up there, probably. Maybe the moon. She looks like she could be from there, pale and surrounded by a faint glow. Though that might just be his vision going all screwy.

“My name is Doctor Ziegler. I’m here to help you.”

“You wanna help?” Junkrat says, and chuckles weakly. “You’ll hafta be a goddamn miracle worker then. You got the keys to this place? Got a way outta here for me and my mate in the next room? No?” He laughs again, and it dissolves into a groan.

Ziegler ignores him (he doesn’t blame her) but not in the same way that N does, somehow. She fiddles with knobs on the strange briefcase-looking chunk of machine she toted in here with her and he blinks at it, wondering how he hadn’t noticed it hanging by her hip until now. Her hand comes up again and pinched between her delicate fingers is some kind of narrow device with an opening at the end, connected to the machine by a thin tube. His first instinct is to twist away from it.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” she insists, and he doesn’t believe her, not for a fucking second.

They both move at the same time. Junkrat gives a wild thrash and Ziegler pins his arm down with her own. She’s standing in his carnage, holding the end of his wrist against her front just to keep it still. He’s painting her lab coat red and she lets him.

He puts up a good fight, he thinks, but in the end his heart flutters painfully and the world goes black. By the time he comes to, Ziegler has him right where she wants him. Her grip is surprisingly strong around his forearm as she holds the device up to his wrist like it’s nothing more than a large pen. A beam of light shoots out of it and it sets his skin ablaze. He grinds out a choked scream, cursing her, asking what kind of person said they weren’t going to hurt you before lighting you on fire. But then he opens his eyes.

There are no flames. His skin is burning like she really lit him up, but she’s merely holding the beam of light over his wound, back and forth, back and forth…

Something white sprouts from the meaty innards of his wrist like a bleached chunk of little stones and Junkrat nearly vomits. It continues to grow for a moment as if drawn toward the light of Ziegler’s device until it branches off into five thinner lengths of white. At the base of his wrist, tendrils of some throbbing red mass reach after the knobbly white tubes and it makes his stomach churn, makes him want to thrash and bite and embrace the monster she’s turning him into, but he can’t look away. The hard white sprouts slow down and taper off near the end of the armrest and Junkrat stares, wide-eyed and open-mouthed.

They’ve taken on the skeletal form of a hand.

“You’re doing good,” Ziegler says, so softly, so kindly, and he thinks again that he’s going to be sick. “Just keep still… there you go…”

He’s morbidly mesmerized, still shaking but not as much. Something about her weight against him is grounding him, dragging him back down to the earth. He stares, speechless for once in his life, as muscle stretches over bone and spongy yellow fat fills in the gaps, as veins and nerves twist out like snakes. He’s still on fire, of course he is, but nothing could get him to look away from this.

“Just a little more.”

Skin grows atop all the meat. Little hairs sprout up along the back of his hand and on his fingers. His knuckles reform like little hills, bumpy with all his familiar scars, and fingernails reach out to cap the ends of his fingers.

Ziegler takes the beam away from him, the burning stops, and he still can’t stop his staring even as she takes a step back to admire her handiwork. He’s afraid — terrified, really — but he needs to know. He holds his breath…

And wiggles his fingers.

“Crikey,” he breathes.

“How does it feel?” Ziegler says, making him twitch. She’s been watching him but her gaze is so gentle he hardly noticed. Just like he hardly noticed the tears suspended in the corners of his eyes.

“Erm,” he says lamely as he shoulders his eyes clear. “Nice. It feels — it feels nice. There it is.” A giggle escapes him, giddy and disbelieving and relieved all at once. It tires him right out — though, he thinks, maybe it wasn’t the giggle that had done that.

“Bend your fingers for me?”

He does so.

“And your wrist?”

He does that too, as much as his restraints allow.

“Excellent,” she says, and offers him a weary little smile.

Junkrat’s eyes will never leave his hand again. It’s back. There it is.

“This…” he utters.

His hand is back and there’s no wound left, but… the ghost of it is still there, throbbing and screaming up his arm. It’s just an echo, just a phantom pain, but that doesn’t make it any less real. Doesn’t free his mind of the image of a saw rending through him.

“This is…” he says, louder. He frowns. “This is right fucked. Why bother breakin’ me if you’re just gonna put me back together again? I thought I was messed up, blowin’ folks up left, right, and center, but you people? Can’t just torture a bloke like the rest, can you? Ya gotta be _special_.”

Ziegler doesn’t answer. But then again, he doesn’t really give her the chance. He looks up at her, still frowning, and at first she seems almost frightened by him.

“You’re the doc that brought me back?”

She calms when she sees that most of the animosity has gone from his eyes, that he’s too drained to keep it up. “Yes, I am.” She pauses to gnaw on her lip. “I am sorry about your prosthetics. They were…” Her eyes flicker toward the blood-splattered wall for the briefest of moments. “They were unsalvageable.”

“Oh, but my hand wasn’t?”

She can’t meet his eyes, but he can’t look away.

“Is…” He tries to wet his lips but his tongue is dry. “She’s gonna do it again, isn’t she? If you can just magic bits of me back. She’s gonna do it again.”

“I’m sorry,” is all Ziegler says, her voice quiet and her eyes apologetic. “You should tell her what she wants to know. She’ll let you go.”

He glowers at her. His hand trembles. “Get stuffed.”

She says nothing, only turns her eyes to the floor as she makes to leave, her job done. Behind her, Junkrat flexes his fingers, staring at them with wonder as if he’s never seen them before. The traces of shock are still slowly leaving his body but he’s not stupid anymore. Not any more than usual, anyway. He eyes Ziegler’s machine as the door slides open for her, and despite his shoddy memory he doesn’t think he’ll be able to forget it.

“Whoever cooked this shit up is a real twisted prick.”

He catches a glimpse of her profile as she casts one last tired, sad look over her shoulder.

“I know.”


	4. Chapter 4

Junkrat has never been good at keeping track of time but now he’s really lost it. He thinks it’s been three days — maybe three and a half, or maybe just two very long ones — but it’s impossible to tell. He’s been locked up in this damn room for the most part and no one had the foresight to hang up a clock for him. How rude.

Between interrogations (and there’s been a few of them, maybe three) the chair and its many-armed friend from hell retreat into seamless hatches in the floor and ceiling, leaving him free to move about the room. He had his way with the door at first, ran his fingers all over it in search of any weak spots he could exploit, but the thing was solid. Not that he gave up, or anything. He searched every corner of the room, every seam, until hopping around on one leg tuckered him out so thoroughly that he had to crawl, until the concrete rubbed his bony knee raw. He still picks up the search whenever N pisses off — not that there’s anything to find, but he’s got nothing else to do in here — and always ends up retiring to the wall that had once been a window. He sits and leans against it, and sometimes he talks, sometimes he listens, because he feels in his bones that Roadhog is still on the other side. Unless, of course, he’s escaped, in which case Junkrat wouldn’t mind his bones being wrong.

So he naps when he wants and sniffs around the room like a dog and sometimes a brick-shaped slab of something is passed to him through a slot in the door. Sometimes he eats. He hadn’t at first, had tried to shove the first one back through the slot until it crumbled in his hands, but he swiftly realized that N probably wouldn’t be too bothered if he actually did die of starvation. He takes his chances now, gobbles the tasteless things down to the tune of Hog’s voice in his head.

_Eat. Gather your strength. Give them hell._

He thinks of nothing but the phantom pain in his wrist, of the damn Heart that got him into this mess, and of his poor Roadhog.

For the first time in his life, he wishes he had more time to think. If he had that, he could cook up a way to get out of here. If he had that, maybe he could forget about the constant pain he’s in for a damn minute. Hurts like a bitch but every time he looks expecting to see another stump, there’s his hand. Not a scratch on it, save for his old scars and all the new sores he gave himself from anxiously chewing on his fingers. Okay, so there are a few scratches on it, but they aren’t the ones that hurt. He keeps expecting his hand to be gone, but it isn’t. He doesn’t know whether to be happy about it or not. It’s a phantom pain like he’s never known before.

At some point, they’d taken him out of his room, strapped him into a wheelchair and wheeled him right on out. He tried to memorize the corridors but they were as identical as ever and he thinks he only saw two staff members total, both of their faces hidden behind surgical masks. In some other, cleaner room, N had drilled him full of holes, chatted him up good. She just wasted time while Junkrat cursed her and screamed. After that, he’d been returned to his cell to find it scrubbed clean and N had stolen his hand again. Just once, he thinks, but he’s pretty sure he passed out at some point, so anything’s possible.

And after all that, he’s still fine. Physically, at least. He doesn’t know how many times his left hand has to be amputated before it stays gone. Maybe that’s what N is trying to figure out. Every time Ziegler holds him down and comforts him as she coaxes it back into existence, a desperate part of him wishes it would just stay gone. If it doesn’t come back, N can’t take it from him anymore. Can’t rend him apart like he’s a slab of meat.

So, physically, he’s fine, but he doesn’t know how long he’s going to last if he has to watch the same saw crunch through his bones every day. He already sees it when he closes his eyes, feels it when he manages to drift off into a shallow sleep. It’s unending. It’s a special kind of hell, tailored specially to him. He doesn’t know how long he’s been here, maybe three days, but it’s hell.

And look at him — he’s perfectly fine.

 

* * *

 

Junkrat’s eyelids drag like weights as he opens them. The room swims as his jumbled thoughts take their time piecing themselves back together. His every movement, even the loll of his head, is sluggish as if he’s been drugged.

_Silly me_ , he thinks, because of course he’s been drugged. It’s just like all the other times he’s woken up strapped into this chair, that stupid lamp hanging above his head, and there’s N just waiting for him to come to. Her silver suit gives it usual shimmer in place of any greeting. Time to dust off the old manners.

“G’morning, sunshine,” he slurs with a lopsided grin.

“It’s two in the afternoon.”

“Well it’s mornin’ for me on account of bein’ roofied. Thanks for that, by the way.”

“Any time, Mr. Fawkes.”

A dry chuckle escapes him. It’s not exactly funny because he knows she means it, but he can always appreciate a good joke. It would’ve been funny, had it been anyone but him in the chair.

He has to admit, he’s gaining a leg up in their banter game. By now, they’re starting to settle into a routine. He wakes up in the chair, they swap quips as if they’re friendly rivals, she asks him where the Heart is, he tells her to go find a cactus and sit on it. Then she cuts him to pieces before Ziegler comes in to reverse it all. He almost feels a little disappointed that she lets herself be this predictable.

It’s not until the drugs in his system wear off a bit more that he realizes their routine is not quite right, that something is different.

Ziegler is already in the room with them. She’s standing behind N’s hologram with a grim look on her face, almost like she tried to stash herself away in the corner and out of sight. She refuses to meet Junkrat’s eyes even as his grin turns into a look of confusion, and then suddenly concern. She won’t look at him — why won’t she look at him? Why is she already _here_?

The machine with the tangled metal limbs begins to lower from the ceiling and Junkrat jostles himself in his restraints, wakes himself back up. Has to get it together — can’t let them get to him.

“To business,” N says genially. “How are you today?”

“Not bad,” he says, as if his fingers aren’t already starting to twitch in anticipation. “Had meself a good wank while thinkin’ about rippin’ your head off. Kinda fancy a cuppa. Thanks for askin’, real considerate.”

N’s nostrils twitch, but that’s all. “I try to be.”

“So then,” he says, would clap his hands together if he still had both of them, if he wasn’t strapped down. “What’s on the agenda? It better be good, I’m gettin’ bored of the classic saw routine. I’ve already seen it all before, if y’know what I mean. You’re not the first to give me the ol’ chop chop.”

“As luck would have it,” N says, far too pleasantly for his liking, “I have something different planned for today. I’m sure you’ve noticed that Dr. Ziegler has joined us early.”

“Sure did.” He leans forward as much as he can and snaps his teeth at the air like he’s trying to take a bite out of her, can’t stop the giggle that follows. “Oi, doc! Where’s my g’morning hello?”

But Ziegler only turns her grimace further away from both of them, one arm gripping the strap of her healing machine and the other hand wrapped protectively around her middle.

“Christ,” he says, frowning dismissively. “You’d think you’re the one about to get your brains blown out. Have some perspective.”

“Yes, Angela, pay attention,” N says, but her cold gaze only makes Ziegler shrink further away. “We’re about to start.”

Junkrat steels himself as the mechanical nightmare overhead twists around. Eventually it settles and something comes down out of the light and into view. It’s long and narrow and he almost doesn’t see it — but when he does, his false grin goes flying out the window and he leans way back in the chair, all the way, not enough. Some nasty thing comes alive in the pit of his stomach, tries to claw its way out. He clamps his mouth shut to keep anything from escaping but his jaw is already starting to tremble and they haven’t even started yet, for fuck’s sake.

“Oh,” N says, her eyes widening. “Angela, I don’t think Mr. Fawkes cares for this particular tool.”

“Dunno what you’re talkin’ about, mate,” Junkrat says through clenched teeth.

“You don’t have to tease him,” Angela mutters.

“I’m not teasing him. I was merely stating an observation. It begs the question…”

She gives Junkrat a long, hard look and he decides that _teasing_ is a bit of an understatement.

“What kind of internationally wanted arsonist is afraid of needles?”

“Not afraid of ‘em,” he manages, eyeing the particularly nasty one in front of him like it’s going to come for him at any second. “Just… don’t particularly care for ‘em, is all. Definitely not afraid. Ain’t afraid of nothin’.”

Can they tell he’s lying through his teeth? Fuck, he hopes not. Hopes they hadn’t looked so deep into his past that they’d somehow discovered his hatred of needles and anything to do with them. Hell, he’s a grown-ass man and he still needs Roadhog to administer his testosterone shots for him because he can’t stand to watch a needle pierce his skin, let alone be the one doing the piercing. He blames his endless list of bad experiences with the malpractitioners of Junkertown, including the tattoo artist. Especially the tattoo artist. Drunk bastards, the lot of them.

“Ain’t afraid,” Junkrat insists, but N probably notices the way his eyes flicker back and forth endlessly between her and the machine’s long needle. Oh yes, she definitely notices.

“I see,” she says. “Then let’s begin.”

The metal arm swivels slowly, a cruel extension of N’s will, and its needle cuts through air like a hot knife through butter. It turns, turns… until its staring straight at him, only an arm’s length from his face. He tries to lean away to escape it just on principle, doesn’t get very far before two metal clasps emerge from the chair. One on either side of his head, and they clamp down on his temples to keep it in place despite the colorful words he spits at them. A small joint in the metal arm’s elbow adjusts, bringing the needle up — to the same level as his eye.

Oh. Oh, fuck.

A laugh bubbles out of him. “Hey, you’re kiddin’ me with this, right?” he says, voice cracking.

With a whir like the hiss of a snake, the needle crawls toward him. He’s shaking all over and it’s come out of nowhere, like the tremors have been building up for hours. They haven’t. It’s like his muscles have gone on strike. He’s already sweating. Drenched. Fuck, it’s hot in here. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

His gaze tries to go everywhere at once — from the needle to N’s impassive face, to Ziegler’s white-knuckled grip on the strap of her machine — back to the needle that’s so close now he could just arch his back and dive right onto it and get it over with—

“You people are fucking sick,” he snarls, thrashes his limbs against their cuffs because he can’t sit still anymore, would rather snap each of his bones in half if it meant he could get out of this chair. Here comes the needle, closer than ever, and his voice goes high-pitched with desperation. “Break my fingers, chop off my hand again, c’mon!”

“I thought you were bored of that,” N says.

Junkrat can only stare at the needle as it approaches. He hisses a long whine that may or may not have been a string of poorly pronounced expletives.

Closer. _Closer_. God, she’s taking her sweet time with this. When he finds his voice again, it’s cracked and terrified.

“You aint even asked me where the Heart is!”

“Oh? Did you want me to?”

“Fuck you,” he breathes, gnashes his teeth. The little Roadhog in his head perks up to offer some wise advice.

_Don’t lose your head._

But Junkrat loses his head, doesn’t he. Of course he does.

“FUCK YOU!” he shrieks, tries to yank his arm out of its cuff even if it grinds all his bones into dust in the process — tries to tug his leg free even if it turns his ankle bone into a meaty hinge — but all it does is hurt him.

He gasps for air, can’t get enough of it, eyes going crossed from trying to keep tabs on the piece of metal that’s just a breath away from piercing his eye — and then it stops. The fury drains out of him like water through his fingers. The room is quiet, the silence disturbed only by the traces of his voice that ride out on every pant. N’s hologram steps forward and away from Ziegler, who’s looking even paler than usual. N leans in close and in a fit of panic Junkrat can’t help but scour her body for details, for signs of weakness or anything he could exploit. It’s just a habit from the bush, won’t do him any good here, he knows. Still notes that her suit is the same color as the needle.

“You’re well traveled, correct?”

He’s not sure which soulless silver thing is more deserving of his fearful gaze. “I,” he tries, has to gulp to wet his parched throat. “I s’pose.”

“There’s no need to be modest. Born and raised in Australia, been to Mexico, Egypt, England, and now Scotland. I’m sure you’ve been witness to many grand spectacles.”

“Might’ve done.”

“Tell me,” she says, voice low. “What is the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen?”

He just blinks at first, because why would she want to know that? But then the gears in his head start to turn and he decides he doesn’t care why she wants to know, he’s not going to tell her, but the gears keep turning and he doesn’t have a metaphorical wrench to jam between them. Never does have many of those metaphorical wrenches lying around, now that he thinks about it.

Memories flash before Junkrat’s eyes like the ever-changing channels on a flickering telly. A whole building crumbling right out of the sky, felled by his grandest creation yet — his first bonfire, as reckless as it had been, lighting his camp on the outskirts of Junkertown — the sunset over Sydney. The first real bed he’d gotten to sleep in since he was a child, a dream of burlap and plywood come to life — the bruised, smashed faces of the Junkers who’d taken his arm — the Outback, his home, from the back of Roadhog’s chopper.

Roadhog. Massive and lumbering, safe and warm. Reaching behind his head for the straps of his gas mask, pulling them down, and there’s a face, broad and scarred. Dark eyes and a nose to match his belly, a slight underbite with scars along his lips. Bloody dimples for Christ’s sake when Junkrat says something embarrassingly soft and he smiles. _Mako_.

The most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. N knows he’s found it by the abject look of horror that dawns on his face.

“Think of it nice and hard,” she says. “You might never see it again.”

“You’re bluffin’.” He’s hardly able to get the words out through his chattering teeth. His tongue is curling back into his mouth like its trying to choke him. “Doesn’t matter what happens or what I do, you’re just gonna fix me up in the end.”

“I’m flattered that you think so highly of me,” N says, “but we’re not gods, Mr. Fawkes. Dr. Ziegler’s technology can only undo what time hasn’t set in stone.”

He can’t breathe. He’s rattling like an engine on the fritz. “Meaning?”

“I only need you alive,” she murmurs. “I don’t need you in one piece.”

She backs away, leaving him open-mouthed and heaving. She stares him down hard.

“Where is the omnicardium?”

His teeth are chattering too hard for him to even curse her, though he’d very much like to.

“Very well.”

The metal arm comes back to life. He’s shuddering, writhing against everything holding him in place and groaning and on the verge of tears. More metal fingers flip out of the clasps holding his head still and he’s helpless to fight back as they reach for his left eye, though he does manage to swallow a whimper as they pry his eyelids apart. Every attempted blink is reduced to nothing more than a useless twitch and his eye is already dry, feels like it’s going to shrivel up like a fucking prune, and he can’t move, can’t move, can’t escape—

“Fuck,” comes his voice, high and breathy. “Shit—”

He expects himself to scream, but he doesn’t. The needle pierces his cornea slowly, like it’s sinking into a thick glob of gelatin, and all that escapes him is a shuddering moan. His twitching fingers scrape into the sterilized steel of the armrest, his toes curling, as the needle sinks deeper, deeper…

Tears begin to ooze from the corners of his eyes — from the stinging pain, from the dry burn. His eye has become the Outback, a desolate wasteland plagued by the sun, sapped dry. More tears come, slow and heavy, and these are from the fear. He’s gasping and oh, there he goes, hyperventilating now.

Deeper. Right through his pupil and lens, boring into the meat of his eye. _Deeper_. His vision suddenly goes crooked and explodes into a thousand white lights that leave him gasping through gritted teeth.

“How does that feel?” N says, lost behind the flashing hellscape. “Is that jogging any memories?”

“I’m gonna kill you,” he says, but there’s little feeling behind it. His voice is quiet, almost defeated. “I’m gonna kill all of you.”

N responds with a twitch of the arm, driving it suddenly further into his skull, and he hears a muffled pop. Something dribbles down his cheek. His mouth hangs open. He’s drooling, keening between gasps.

The Heart — all of this over the stupid fucking Heart.

_Give it to her_ , says someone in his head, but it’s not Hog. The voice is too high, too manic, too sharp.

_Just give it to her, save yourself. What kind of survival instincts do you have, mate?_

Oh, right. That’s his own voice. Doesn’t sound much like the one coming out of his mouth right now, if he’s honest.

_You don’t need the money, you never need the money, you’re King Jamison Fawkes! Need more dough? Steal it, you wanker._

He knows that. Knows that, knows it, knows that, of course he can just steal more, he can have whatever he wants.

But he wants the Heart.

_Oh, fuck you. Just get rid of the stupid thing and get outta here with your life!_

“Can’t,” he says, doesn’t realize he says it out loud. “Can’t… Need it.”

The fireworks in his eye are breached by N’s face when she leans down in front of him. “Still with us?”

“Gonna sell it,” he says to her, and his mouth grins on its own. “To the highest bidder. Gonna travel the world.”

Maybe go to New Zealand. Roadhog never shuts up about the place even though he only lived there as a tyke, and Junkrat can only imagine what that must have been like. Tiny (maybe not so tiny) Roadhog catching fish with his mum and fashioning himself into a budding prince of the sea. The thought of being on any island smaller than Australia makes Junkrat’s guts twist into knots but he would go there if Mako really wanted to. Would go just about anywhere if Mako wanted to.

“— the highest bidder?” N’s voice wafts through his thoughts like a bad radio signal, fuzzy and unintelligible. He shudders. Would kill a man for the chance to blink.

“Sorry, didn’t quite catch that,” he tries to say, but it just doesn’t come out. His tongue is thick and unwieldy. He’s stopped shaking. The white stars in his vision fade to gray, to black, at the edges. He just sits there, takes the needle in his eye, and the world begins to fade.

“Gonna sell it,” he utters.

Maybe go to New Zealand.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  
The beach is deserted, but not silent. It doesn’t need lazy beach-goers to fill the air with chatter, already has the shuddering whistle of a nearby albatross and the constant roar of the waves. It reminds Junkrat of the Outback — not much, but enough. The wilderness of it all, an ocean view as endless as the red sands of his home. It’s hot, too, even though this heat is humid and horrible and not at all like the dry kind he’s accustomed to. So, _like_ home. Not much, but enough.

It’s clearly some kind of home to Roadhog, who’s still sitting further up the beach where the thick wall of trees and bushes starts to overtake the ground. He already had his walk through the water, already picked out his bounty of shells and rocks, and now seems perfectly pleased to just sit back in the sand, half darkened by the protective shade of a large shrub.

Junkrat’s never seen him so relaxed, mask stowed away and hair tied in only a lazy ponytail. He even shuts his eyes (yes, both of them, at the same damn time) to enjoy the warm breeze that kicks up a few fallen leaves by his toes.

The ocean catches Junkrat staring and nips at his foot with a tentative wave. He scampers away with a screech and a giggle before the water can lap at his peg leg. He’s trying to warm up to the shallows of the sea, and only at Roadhog’s insistence, but he’s still not willing to risk the rust. He turns his back on the waves, hits dry land before he realizes, and his peg leg drills down into the sand. It sends him sprawling face first — barely manages to land on his hands instead of his face. An _oof_ leaves lips that are curved in a grin.

Roadhog casts him a disapproving look from further up the beach. “Don’t come cryin’ to me when your arm jams up,” he says, watching wearily as Junkrat hops to his feet and nearly topples over again.

But Junkrat only laughs before resuming his trek up the shore. “S’just a little sand, not gonna hurt it, mate.”

“That’s what you said in Queensland,” Roadhog says, skeptical, and his dark eyes are full of meaning.

Ah yes, the great Queensland debacle. _Let’s slide down the dunes, mate,_ Junkrat had said. _It’ll be fun,_ he’d said. Well, it had been. Hadn’t been able to wear his prosthetics for a week while he picked all the grit out, but it had been fun.

“Sure, but that was real sand. This here’s just a cheap imitation.”

Roadhog raises an eyebrow as Junkrat scampers on over, plops right down next to him in the shade, and pats the ground affectionately.

“You talkin’ shit about my sand?” Roadhog rumbles.

“Oh, I didn’t realize you owned the whole beach.”

“There’s a lot you don’t realize.”

“Oh yeah? Like?”

“Like the sandfly about to crawl up your shorts.”

“Ha ha, funny. You funnyman. What a sparklin’ sense of humor you’ve got on you.”

Roadhog merely reaches over and delves his hand into the darkness of his shorts, much to Junkrat’s surprise.

“Oi, take me out to dinner first, you—” He falters, stares at the tiny winged bug pinched between Roadhog’s fingers.

“Oh,” he says quietly, meets his eyes. “My hero.”

Roadhog grins crookedly. “That’ll be sixty bucks.”

“For a bug?” Junkrat exclaims, unable to keep himself from smiling as Roadhog snickers. He pats himself down as if checking his pockets, pretends to look mortified. “Must’ve left me wallet in me other peg leg.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Is there” — he bats his eyelashes with a smile — “any other way I can possibly repay you?”

Roadhog snorts, but he’s still grinning. “You really are a rat.”

“What, you thought they called me Junkrat ‘cause of my dashin’ good looks?”

Roadhog snorts again. Then, with one of his rare relaxed sighs that sends a tingle down Junkrat’s spine, he leans back to lie on the sand. Junkrat flops down beside him, grinning toothily and wriggling his back like a desert lizard until his skin finds the hidden, cooler sand beneath. A moment of blissful silence passes between them, carried on a hot and humid breeze — but only a moment.

“I’m serious about that offer, y’know.”

“Hmm.”

“No, really. Ain’t no one here, we can do whatever we want.”

“Mhmm.”

“You ever done the nasty on a beach before? Could be fun. Might get sand up our arses — actually, scratch that, definitely gonna get sand up there — but ain’t no harm done, we got the world’s biggest tub just right there, we could—”

He breaks off when a massive hand clamps down around his face.

“Shh,” Roadhog says, and doesn’t release him until he stops trying to gnaw a hole through his palm.

And even then, Junkrat can only find it in himself to keep on smiling, to admire the way the sun hits Roadhog’s scars just right. It warms them until they look like little dunes along his face, makes them cast tiny shadows across his warmed skin. Before long, Junkrat’s eyes are greedily scouring every inch of Roadhog’s body — his giant, sand-flecked arms, the calloused fingers tapping idly against his stomach. The lovely contented look on his face.

Junkrat realizes he must have sighed — quite dreamily, he imagines — because Roadhog chuckles and the next moment he’s rolling onto his side to face Junkrat, dwarfing him in the shade of his great belly and broad shoulders. Their eyes meet, that contented look is now trained on him, and Junkrat feels like he could die right then and there.

“Can’t keep your eyes to yourself, I see,” Roadhog rumbles, his lips cocked in a half grin.

“Dunno what you’re talkin’ about, mate,” Junkrat says, but he’s been caught. He has to stifle a delighted laugh as Roadhog reaches over with a big, warm hand to cup the back of his neck, as their lips meet in a slow but hungry kiss.

Gentle was never Junkrat’s thing. Growing up an orphan in Australia’s wasteland, gentle was what got you killed. But then along came Roadhog, Enforcer and Junker murderer, huge enough to crush his skull in one hand. Probably the most hardcore person he’s ever met, and yet… It never fails to send chills down Junkrat’s spine when the hands that could break him hold him like he’s made of glass. It leaves him breathless to think that someone so strong and so lovely would ever think to be gentle with him — _want_ to be gentle with him, _choose_ to be it with him. Gangly, loud, fidgety Junkrat, of all people. He’s the only one who doesn’t get slaughtered by those big, mean hands.

Junkrat giggles, breaking the kiss, and Roadhog grins against it.

“Stay with me,” says that wonderful voice, so low and gravely that it thrums within him.

Junkrat smiles, hates to sound sappy but hey, the big lug started it. “Forever, mate.”

He leans in to restart the kiss—

Without warning, his eye lights up like a firework. He pulls away with a yelp, squeezing it shut.

“Bugger,” he hisses. “Think I got sand in me eye — you got a rag on you?”

His eye is panging like a motherfucker and he tries to sit up but something suddenly pins him back down. He opens his stinging eye to see Roadhog looming over him, his giant hands caging his arms to the sand, the contented look gone from his face. The crooked grin gone. His expression has gone blank, his eyes dark, too dark — dark like the ocean. His head is blocking the sun but somehow, Junkrat can see it anyway, blinding and white. It only makes his eye hurt more.

“Listen,” Junkrat says conversationally, “I know I’m the one who suggested it, and I’m not tellin’ you to bugger off forever — but can you bugger off for a sec, mate? I’m being blinded by sand down here!”

Roadhog refuses to move, and it occurs suddenly to Junkrat that it doesn’t even look like he’s breathing. The beach is too quiet, the albatross gone, and he can’t hear the telltale sound of Hog’s usual rasping breaths. It lights a spark of fear in his chest because — Can Roadhog not breathe? He’s got his mask on him somewhere, the stupid bastard, why doesn’t he just put it back on? Junkrat gives a good wiggle but Roadhog’s arms are inescapable, like massive redwood logs pinning him down.

“Oi, Roadie, get off,” he snaps.

Roadhog’s mouth opens. “Stay with me.”

“I’m not goin’ anywhere, I just gotta—”

“Stay with me, Fawkes.”

Junkrat pales.

“Wake up,” Roadhog says. It’s not his voice anymore. “Angela, the beam.”

Junkrat’s eye ignites like it’s on fire and he screams, tries to clutch at it but something hard and cold and not Roadhog bites into his arm when he tries to move it. He squeezes his eyes shut but only one of them goes — the other burns and shrieks and fills his whole skull with molten metal. Roadhog disappears, the beach disappears, until all that’s left is a formless kaleidescope of flashing lights that make him want to be sick.

And then, suddenly, it all stops. The fire in his head is put out. The lights go dark and his parched eyelid slides thickly shut. He sits there in the darkness, just panting, just trembling. Mind reeling. Don’t think — can’t think, anyway — just breathe.

“Angela, step back.”

“I need to make sure he’s all right.”

“Angela.”

“Let me do my job.”

Junkrat lets his eyes flicker open, hisses, has to try again — slowly this time, because one of his eyes feels tender and swollen like it’s too big for his skull.

The beach is gone. Roadhog is gone. He’s back at Watchpoint Aberdeen under N’s cold, hard gaze, his face wet with tears and God knows what else. The needle has retreated to hang an arm’s length away from his head again, coated in a thick, unidentifiable fluid tinged with red.

He wants to scream until his throat is raw, wants to break all his bones himself just to get it over with, but all that comes out of him is a shuddering sigh, a croaked, “Fuck me.”

“Are you well?” Ziegler asks him. The pen-like device of her healing machine is pinched between two of her fingers, hovering in standby by her side in case she needs it again.

“Are you?” he rasps, because in his humble opinion she looks rather ill and it’s only polite to ask. His question only serves to pale her further.

“You said something about the highest bidder,” N says, and that’s Ziegler’s cue to step back. She does so, returns to her corner to stand there like a statue, and it’s just him and N again.

“Might’ve done,” Junkrat mutters. “Can’t quite remember after having a needle shoved through me skull.”

“How much do you want?”

“Want?” he repeats thickly. His eye feels like a great glob of jelly jammed into his head, and so does his brain, for that matter.

“Money, Mr. Fawkes. I’m asking for your price.”

He frowns. “N-no. No, it’s not for sale.”

_Wrong, ya drongo, it_ is _for sale. Get your story straight._

“Not for sale,” he amends, “not for you.”

Her scowl quickly dwarfs his. “Even if I’m the highest bidder?”

“Don’t trust you, don’t know what you’d do with it.”

“But you’d trust some random lowlife? You’d trust a criminal?”

“Honor among thieves and all that.”

“This is not about honor,” N says, and the darkness of her frown as the needle twitches and begins to come forward again terrifies him. He can only watch and gnash his teeth together as the chair reaches out to pry his eyelids apart again.

“This is about money. I know you. I’ve done my research. Before we caught wind of you, you’d been trying to sell the omnicardium for months, biding your time until someone was willing to pay the right price. So tell me, Mr. Fawkes, what do you want?”

Junkrat can’t stop himself. “Still kinda fancy a cuppa.”

Something in N’s face gives a nasty twitch and the needle lunges forward again.

“N!” Ziegler cries, but Junkrat barely hears her over the sound of his own cry as the membrane of his eye is mercilessly impaled. He shakes and shudders, his head held still by the chair’s clasps. His vision goes white again. He doesn’t see — can’t see — N as she takes a moment to close her eyes, to take a calming breath.

“This isn’t necessary,” comes Ziegler’s voice again, followed quickly by something low and sharp from N.

“Perhaps you should let me do my job.”

The needle stops delving into his eye, just sits there to wait, and it’s a blessed moment of relief.

“Do you know what we plan to do with the Heart?” N says, her voice calm and lifeless once more.

He’s afraid of what might happen if he refuses to talk to her so he searches deep for his voice and finds it cowering in the back of his throat.

“Dunno,” he says weakly. “Omnic army? World domination? Can’t say you’re the most creative blokes I know.”

“I’ll tell you. Nothing. We only want to keep it out of dangerous hands, keep it from being abused. Forget about us — What might someone else do with something so powerful? They would be the ones to build an army, not us. That is exactly what we aim to prevent.

“We sacrificed so much to stop the last omnic crisis.”

Yeah, he’s heard the stories.

“We don’t want another one.”

He wonders about that.

“You don’t want another one.”

That was true, at least.

“We’re on the same side.”

“Not on the same bloody side,” Junkrat snaps, flecks of spittle flying from his lips. He wishes N was there in the flesh just so he could see them hit her face. “Never will be. Would rather be dead and buried than be on your side.”

N’s face goes stony. “That can be arranged.”

The harnesses holding his head in place recede and Junkrat shrieks as there’s suddenly nothing keeping him still. His body shakes violently, turns him into a damn bobblehead, but the needle is still in him, immobile, and it’s turning his eye into mush the same way it would have if they’d shoved a fucking electric mixer into his skull. He tries — God, he tries — but another strangled cry escapes him because he can’t sit still, can’t stop his tremors — not on a good day and especially not now. N watches and Ziegler doesn’t while he struggles desperately not to tear his own eye apart.

“Calm—” he stutters, says it out loud because his mind is in chaos, his thoughts running rampant, and shit, that can’t be his voice, all quivering and faint. “Calm thoughts. Calm—”

_Just like Hog says._

“Slow— d-deep breaths—”

_Can’t breathe can’t breathe can’t breathe_

Something halfway between a sob and a scream comes tearing out of him as he jerks around the needle. His vision is gone — one eye closed and the other torn to shreds — and he doesn’t see N step forward to close the gap between them.

“Where,” she says, voice low despite his endless babble, “is the Heart?”

The noises coming out of him have their own mind, and so too does his voice, cracked like a dry riverbed. “We’re… we’re gonna buy a mansion… Six of ‘em — and not even live in ‘em…” A chuckle leaves him but it sounds dead. “Gonna go on fancy cruises and hijack the ships, eat all their food… Make the suits walk the p-plank…”

“You’re going to take back what doesn’t belong to them,” N murmurs. “I understand. I can help you. Just let me have the Heart.”

He absolutely hates how soothing her voice has gone, loathes her in her entirety, but more than anything he hates himself because for a moment, he considers giving in. It would be the easiest thing in the world to stop this agony. He almost decides that the mental torment is worse than the physical torture because his poor brain is spinning, twisted like a top under N’s looming hand, and he doesn’t know what to do. Could save himself, could save Roadhog, too, and it would be easy but—

_Would it be worth it?_

The more he shakes, the more it hurts, and the pain only serves to double his tremors, to triple them, and he’s certainly sobbing now but can’t tell if it’s tears or blood that’s running down his cheek. Can’t sit still, can’t sit still — if he lunges forward he could just impale his brain on the needle and fuck himself right, end it all now—

“What do you say, Jamison?” says N’s voice in the darkness. “Do we have a deal?”

_A deal_

_Fifty fifty_

_Whatever you found in the omnium, I want half of it_

_It’s gonna be tricky to sell, mate_

_I can wait_

_Fifty fifty_

Junkrat opens his eye.

He smiles.

“Gimme a blowie and you can have whatever you want, mate. Been rock hard all day!” He cackles — the needle gouges the gelatin of his eye with every bob of his head — N’s face goes cold. “Hope you’ve got a taste for cunt ‘cause mine’s got your name on—”

The needle splits off into multiple prongs within the membrane of his eye. The metal arm gives a great backwards wrench. His eye socket _screams_ and he sees a flash of white, a flash of red, as he hears a squelch and a wet _rip_.

The needle pulls back, and hanging from it is a collapsed white orb and its dripping tail of tangled nerves, veins, and strips of torn muscle.

Ziegler tries to run forward, her hands already flying for her healing machine, but N’s voice alone stops her in her tracks, calm and pleasant under the thunder of Junkrat’s animal howls.

“Leave him. Let him think on it for a while.”

“This is barbaric,” Ziegler cries.

“Nobody ever said that saving lives isn’t.”

He doesn’t hear them leave, doesn’t see anything at all, but suddenly he’s alone in the room and the chair releases him. He goes sprawling out of it straight onto his knees, grasps at the gaping hole in his skull. His fingers brush against the ends of something soft, something wet and frayed.

_Can’t breathe_

It’s just _gone_.

_Can’t_

He’s going to die here.

_I can’t_

“Roadhog,” he cries, because Roadhog is supposed to be his bodyguard, is supposed to be _here_ , is supposed to save him and hold him and put him out of his misery if it ever comes down to it — what kind of bodyguard is he if he isn’t fucking _here_ —

“Hog,” he moans, chokes it out on a sob. Doesn’t see the chair and its many-armed companion recede back into their respective walls because everything’s spinning. He stumbles even though he’s on his knees, crashes down onto his palm but even that barely keeps him up because of his arm’s violent trembling.

The Heart. Nothing is worth this — he wishes N would come back so he could just give her the damn thing.

_Fuck the Heart and fuck it good, that’s not why you’re doin’ this. You give it up and it’s over, back to square one. I won’t lie, it’s what you deserve, but it’s not what you want._

_I’m pretty sure he wants to live_ , says a different voice. Hog’s voice. He wishes it was real.

_You don’t know what he wants, you’re not even here, you prick._

_I’m pretty sure_ you _want to live._

_That’s beside the point._

_Other ways to get money. Don’t need the Heart._

“Shut up,” Junkrat grinds out through clenched teeth. “Shut up, shut up, shut up.”

The fucking _Heart_. If only he didn’t know where it was, they wouldn’t ask him. If only he could forget, just like he forgets everything else.

If he can forget…

Junkrat stares at the concrete wall with his remaining eye. Cold, hard. Hard enough that his grenade hadn’t even been able to take a chip out of it.

Perfect.

He crawls over to it, his lungs heaving with every shaky breath and his hand leaving bloody palm prints behind him. His fingers ghost across the wall for just a moment. He hesitates.

_S’gonna hurt._

“Good.”

With a furious cry, he bashes his forehead into the concrete. A tremor rocks his brain, makes something hot and wet spurt from his gaping eye socket. He closes his eye, grits his teeth. Drives his skull into the gray.

_Forget._

His skin wears down with each strike, quickly going a muddled brown and blue. Blood sprays the wall and he’s not sure where it came from. His skull is wearing thin and he’s sure he’s broken his nose.

_Forget._

He can’t see. Can barely feel. His body moves like machinery, mindless and repetitive, skull to wall, forehead to concrete, forever. He’s not sure why this is happening but he doesn’t stop. It feels right. Hurts. Might as well finish the job.

“Hold him down!”

The smallest of sounds leaves him as something heavy tackles him to the ground. Something like hands pins his arms down and makes his shoulder blades dig into the floor.

“Gently, please,” implores a soft but stern voice. Familiar voice.

He can’t move, can’t even find the will to cry as he feels a familiar heat begin to light up his face. It sears his eye, sets his nose ablaze, turns his skull into a white-hot festering hell. His thoughts all begin to fit back together like jigsaw pieces and the darkness fades away and he sees a pale face with blue eyes leaning over him.

“There you go,” she murmurs, and it makes his chest hurt in a way his head doesn’t. “ _Ganz ruhig_ , be calm.”

His eye socket fills up until it feels thick and swollen, until the room swims back into reality and he can see the large gloved hands holding him down.

“He’s awake,” says a man’s voice behind him.

“I see that.”

“We need to go before N checks in.”

“Yes, I know.”

The hands leave him but he doesn’t have the energy to chase after them, not even to watch as Ziegler and her guard make their swift escape from his room. He just lies there, face caked in dried blood, staring at the ceiling.

He remembers. He isn’t even allowed to forget.

“It’s lookin’ a bit hopeless, Hoggy,” he croaks, cracks a smile.

If N can read minds, he’s done for. The location of the omnicardium is playing on repeat in his head and he can’t stop it, as if trying to get rid of it had only strengthened it. Over and over. Forever.

_Eyre Crater. Used to be a lake._

Laughter bubbles out of him, followed by sniffles and whimpers and more laughter. If N could catch him, could turn him into this pathetic mess and shove his eyeball right back into his socket after tearing it out, he’s pretty sure she can read minds, too.

_Eyre Crater. Rhymes with hair. Think I’ll pull all mine out._

Surely, she heard that one. Was like a banshee’s wail in his head.

“Got what you wanted, then. Cheers.”

Roadhog on the beach, his loose ponytail waving in the sea breeze. Flecks of white sand stuck to the sweat of his shoulders, his back. A rested smile, a real smile, just for Junkrat. A treasure more priceless than anything he ever found in any omnium.

He’s lost it.

He’s lost it all.


	5. Chapter 5

Days pass before they even tell Roadhog that Junkrat is here. He stares at the motionless figure on the other side of the one-way glass, careful to keep his face impassive. Don’t frown, don’t breathe too fast, don’t even blink. Inside, he’s tearing himself apart.

Junkrat is leaning against the other side of the glass. This angle mainly gives Roadhog an eyeful of his protruding shoulder blades and patchy hair but sometimes, he glances toward the door and Roadhog steals a coveted look at his face. It’s rigid, tired. Thin lips drawn down in a frown that makes him look old and it hurts to see him without his smile, to not hear his laughter. His eyes are only a little glassy, not as prone to wandering as they usually are. He’s focused — only one thing on his mind instead of a thousand all battling for his attention. Roadhog hasn’t seen him like this in a long time.

“You tortured him,” Roadhog says, voice low.

Behind him, N’s hologram is nonchalant. “He refused to cooperate.”

“You didn’t give him what he wanted.”

“I tried. He blew himself up and attempted to take me with him.”

“He doesn’t look very blown up.”

“You doubt me, Mr. Rutledge?”

Roadhog snorts. Of course he doubts her. The bitch probably hasn’t told him a single truth since they met. And yet, he can’t keep his eyes from scanning Junkrat’s body for wounds — scabs, bruises, burns, anything at all — but there’s nothing. His skin is clear of dirt and soot for once in his life and all Roadhog can find are old scars and familiar moles, the usual freckles. The mechanical receptors at the ends of his stumps are gone and that’s certainly odd but other than that, Junkrat looks perfectly unharmed, taken care of, even… apart from that haunted look in his eyes.

Who knows — maybe he did blow himself up. Maybe they put him back together. At this point, Roadhog’s only sure of one thing, causes be damned: Junkrat is hurting.

“What’d you do to him?” Roadhog asks, dares to take his eyes off his charge for a heartbeat.

“Not enough, apparently.”

The hunger in her gaze as it drifts over Junkrat’s hunched shoulders makes Roadhog want to belt her hologram in the face, if only to see his fist rend the image of her in two.

“What happened to keeping the peace?”

“At any cost, remember?”

It takes all of his self control not to accost her then and there. Wouldn’t do him any good — would only get rid of her temporarily, make her take away his window into the next room. He’d lose sight of Junkrat again. Can’t have that. Can’t let him go yet.

Roadhog takes a step forward and lets his broad fingers travel across the expanse of the window, callouses moving over smooth glass. It’s hardy stuff, he can tell just by touching. He’d probably break before it did. But, when he looks down at the trembling lump at his feet, he knows that he would risk it. They’re so close… If not for this wall, Roadhog could reach down and run his fingers through Junkrat’s frazzled hair, could knead some of that tension out of his shoulders. His hands itch with the need to touch him, but first they itch to wrap around N’s throat and _squeeze_.

He feels N’s needling eyes prickle across his back.

“Let’s make a deal.”

“No.”

She carries on as if she hadn’t heard.

“Convince him to tell us the location of the omnicardium and we’ll release you.”

“You want me to do your job for you,” he says, shooting a glower over his shoulder.

“He obviously cares about you. He came this far when we threatened to kill you. He calls for you when he thinks I’m not listening.”

His fingers twitch with the urge to strangle her.

“At this point,” she continues, “I’m certain he would do whatever you ask of him.”

He hates it, despises it almost as much as he hates himself, but he looks down at Junkrat’s curled body again and knows that she’s right. How much does she know about them, he wonders as he helplessly scans for wounds again. How long did she spend researching, watching? If she knows the lengths Junkrat would go to for him, she already knows too much. Somehow, she knows the signs — but she can’t be as familiar with them as Roadhog is. No one is.

Complete stillness. Junkrat hasn’t moved from this spot the whole time Roadhog’s been watching. Normally, he’d be bouncing around the room trying to escape, even without his prosthetics. Other than the usual tremors that rock his shoulders, he’s as immobile as Roadhog has been.

Silence. Not that he’d be able to hear anything through the glass, but Roadhog knows what Junkrat looks like when he talks. Bobbing head, dramatic gestures with his hands, body alive with laughter. When Junkrat is afraid, he babbles endlessly, no filter on his mouth. When he’s mad, he throws tantrums. Now, he’s not even muttering to himself.

He’s not okay.

If Roadhog told him to give in, he would.

“You took his prosthetics,” Roadhog says, just because he can’t stand the quiet anymore. He’s pathetic, this pushover Junkrat has turned him into. He used to love the silence. Gave him a chance to shut down everything in his head. Used to tell Junkrat to shut up, used to fantasize about cutting out his tongue. Now the silence only makes him grow wary.

“I told you,” N says, “he blew himself up. To pieces, if you want to get into the specifics of it. We have the technology and know-how to rebuild his limbs but that’s neither here nor there, is it?” She watches him with such casual disregard that he’s tempted once more to try throttling her hologram like an idiot. He has to smother the urge with a snort and a wheeze. He’s not Junkrat. He can control himself.

“Don’t worry,” she says. “He’s been fine without them. He’s been spending most of his time strapped into a chair so I’d go as far as to say he doesn’t even need them anymore.”

There’s that sideways glance — she knows she’s getting to him. He’ll admit, he’s not making it very difficult. His hands had curled into fists ages ago.

“However, I do feel the need to tell you of his unfortunate behavior. He’s immature, rude, and entirely unwilling to cooperate with us. He also seems to have a strange aversion to needles.”

The twitch his face gives is minute, he hardly feels it, but her eyes flash like a pair of guns. He wishes he could hide behind his mask now more than ever because there’s a deep frown threatening to tug at his lips and he doesn’t know how long he can keep it at bay. Doesn’t even know if he managed to keep the horror out of his eyes.

She didn’t. Please tell him she didn’t. He suddenly sees a striking image of Junkrat, gnawing on his lip and swaying on his feet at the mere mention of his testosterone shots. Junkrat, kicking the syringe of morphine out of the doctor’s hand and away from the ragged remains of his bloody leg. But N’s eyes are so bright, even behind the veil of a hologram. Oh, Jamie…

“Other than that,” N says, “he responds to the drill a little too well.”

She’s killing him.

“I think he might actually like the bone saw.”

He’s going to kill her.

“But the needle? The needle was very effective. I’m starting to wonder if there’s anything else he’s afraid of. Certainly not the usual, considering his past. Not snakes… spiders… pain…” — the corners of her mouth twitch — “water.”

He doesn’t make a single move, doesn’t even blink. He’s statuesque but she’s already staring him down, prodding at him with the daggers in her eyes. She already knows.

“Don’t fuck with me,” he growls, barely.

“Of course not, Mr. Rutledge. I’m only saying that Mr. Fawkes seemed quite distressed during his flight. I can’t imagine his prosthetics would allow him to stay afloat in deep water. Without them, I doubt he can swim at all. I’m concerned for his wellbeing.” She lifts a hand to her heart. “It would be most unfortunate if he happened to come across one of our ten meter deep ballast tanks.”

Her eyebrows rise in a meaningful look. He gets the message loud and clear. His only response is a truly dark glare, one that might have killed her if she had been here in person. He doesn’t even bother to wonder why a place like this would have ballast tanks. He only wants to glare, and he describes to her in a single look the things he’d do to her if she was here.

A beat of silence passes. They both stare daggers.

Then, as if it’s unrelated, she says calmly, “Was there anything you wanted to say to Mr. Fawkes before I leave you?”

His glare doesn’t let up. It only gets darker, darker, until he feels it start to consume him. Until he feels himself begin to burn away at the edges, until Junkrat disappears from his heart and all he wants to do is bathe in her blood for the fun of it.

“As you wish,” N says, and her hologram blinks out.

Slowly, his fists begin to unclench. His heart rate calms. Color begins to return to the room. Behind him, the one-way glass regains its concrete facade and he’s alone. Silence. Nothing but his wheezing. He lifts a hand to his face.

_Fuck_ , he thinks.

Roadhog breathes… and fears that soon, Junkrat won’t.

 

* * *

 

Junkrat thought he’d been afraid of the needle. Sure he was, of course he was. Still couldn’t think about it without wanting to be sick, but he’s remembering now that there are worse things than needles. Needles are small, they only hurt. You can dodge a needle.

You can’t dodge a massive tank full of churning ocean water.

He doesn’t mind that he woke up from another drug-induced kip stark naked. He never particularly cared for the shorts they put him in at the start of all this anyway. He’s less grateful, however, for the pirate-esque fucking metal plank they left him to wake up on. Who even does that? What kind of cartoon villain keeps a plank for walking in their basement?

He tries to laugh it all off — silly, this. He’s had dreams like this before — but he keeps getting choked up mid giggle whenever the water below splashes up and takes a bite at his foot. It’s cold — fuck, it’s cold — and leaves his ankle dripping with salt water drool. He tries not to think about how deep the tank might be either, but that’s a bit of a tall order. It’s hard to ignore when the waves are black and only get blacker the deeper he looks, like liquid tar. Does it lead straight to the ocean? Does it even make any sense for a tank to be built like that? Does he really want to know?

But forget about the tank that they’re probably (hopefully) not going to dunk him into. Back to the basement — and it’s definitely a basement. It’s dark, dingy, and grossly moist all over the place, like no one ever comes down here. He doesn’t blame them — there’s not much to see unless you like the grungy industrial atmosphere.

He remembers through the drug-induced fog that some goons had stuffed him into a wheelchair, had stood on either side of him as they’d descended down an elevator. He never would have remembered if not for the fact that they left said wheelchair right there where he can see it, near the bottom of the tank. He sees a pale head of hair down there, too, though he can’t quite tell what its owner is doing. Doesn’t really bother himself with it either — is kind of busy trying to keep his balance on a slippery fucking plank.

He presses his back against the wall, feels the chill of soggy metal run down his spine. The twisting water below him spits cold spray onto his legs and bare stomach. He feels a chill of a different kind — prays to whatever god there is that his clumsy ass doesn’t slip and fall. What a way to go that’d be. Jamison Fawkes, wanted criminal, dead because he couldn’t manage to stand still for more than five seconds. He laughs and it echoes tinnily.

“I’m flattered you took me up but, uh, this ain’t exactly what I meant when I asked for a blowie,” he says with another laugh, though this one comes out nervously. “Typically there’s less” — he gulps — “water.”

“Something wrong, Mr. Fawkes?” N asks. “Your leg is shaking.” She’s not here — he can’t see her, anyway — but that doesn’t mean she’s not watching. Her voice comes from some unseen speaker like a bad stink he can’t suss out the source of.

“Just a bit chilly down here. Almost wish you hadn’t taken me pants.” He giggles, high-pitched and dumb, and has to shove a few knuckles into his mouth just to shut himself up.

No, nothing wrong at all. Nothing wrong with the gigantic tank he can’t see the bottom of… and the fact that he sinks like a rock with or without his prosthetics. He never fucking learned to swim, you just couldn’t in the Outback’s irradiated waters without popping a second head like a boner, that’s not his fucking fault!

“Not to worry, you don’t have to be down here for long,” N says. “Dr. Ziegler is manning the ballast controls on the floor. As soon as you comply, she’ll drain the tank and retrieve you via the airlock.”

“Yeah? And what makes you think I’m gonna be _complyin’_ any time soon?”

“I had a little chat with Mr. Rutledge.” He can barely hear her over the roar of the water and working machinery but oh, he does, and oh, the start his heart gives is a funny one.

“Roadhog?” he says, perking up. His foot slides a little on the metal plank and he has to steady himself against the wall with a frantic hand before he can continue. “What did he say?” He suddenly scowls. “What’d you do to him?”

“Nothing at all,” N says nonchalantly, and he can just imagine the slight raise of her eyebrows, the calm voids of her eyes. “We only talked, same as you and I. He seems to think you’re not a very good swimmer.”

And there’s that odd flutter in his chest again. What is that, indigestion? It’s definitely not fear. No, definitely not.

“He,” Junkrat starts, swallows heavily, but his throat is so damn dry. How can it be dry when absolutely everything around him is drenched in sea spray? “He wouldn’t just up and tell you that. He doesn’t tell nobody nothin’ — doesn’t even tell me shit unless I really pester him!” He laughs like it’s funny. It’s not. The air tastes like salt.

He frowns suddenly. “You didn’t pester him, did you?”

“I didn’t need to,” she says, and the smugness in her voice makes his guts twist into knots.

“The fuck did you do?” he snarls, shivers a little too hard and nearly slips again. “If you hurt him, I’ll—”

The plank beneath his feet shifts suddenly and he breaks off with a genuine yelp, frantically tries to keep his balance on only one foot. The metal board is moving. His back is against the wall, pushing, keeping him upright, but the calloused pads of his foot are sliding right along the wet metal because the plank is receding into the wall—

He realizes now that he’s not meant to walk the plank. Of course not. That would be too simple, wouldn’t it? Too bloody simple. The plank’s just going to toss him overboard itself. Sure, why not?

The water below sounds like a thousand cobras hissing and—

“You’ll what?” N says. Oh, one of the cobras has learned to talk. Good on it.

“I’ll kill you, I’ll fuckin’—”

He almost slips. Swears, searches with scrabbling fingers for something on the wall to grasp but it’s too sheer.

“Where is the Heart?” N says.

“I’ll never—”

“Where,” N demands, “is the Heart?”

“I won’t—”

Christ, his leg is sore. How much trouble would it have been for them to let him have the wheelchair up here?

“Ain’t no point to this!” he says. All his pent up energy bursts out in a weird screech of a laugh. “Can’t tell you shit if I’m drowned and dead, y’know. Can’t” — almost slips — “tell anyone shit if I’m—”

His foot goes flying. His spine scrapes down the abrasive metal wall as he falls. His bare ass hits the plank and sends his brain rattling around in his skull. His mind is reeling, his heart pounding — he didn’t fall off, he’s still alive, he’s still okay — but the metal is uncomfortably frigid and damp against his groin and the tank is spitting all over him, lapping at his thighs with frozen waves, and he can’t tell if he’s moist with sea water or sweat or if he straight up just pissed himself.

“The Heart, Mr. Fawkes.”

“You’ll leave Roadhog alone if you know what’s good for you,” he says. Babbling, here comes the babbling, shit, shit, fuck. He wishes those tasteless bricks they fed him would come surging back out of his mouth instead of this. “First of all ‘cause I’m gonna fuckin’ kill you if ya don’t — but second of all — he’ll never tell you anything! The man’s a fortress, body ‘n’ mind, you’ll never get a word out. Me, I’m pretty good at keepin’ secrets, but Roadhog?” He tries for an impressed whistle but it comes out a frightened whine instead. He chuckles hastily to cover it up. “He — he’s the best, mate.”

A prolonged silence overtakes the ballast room. The water licks his fingers with a hundred cold tongues as he grips the edge of the plank for dear life. He sees the top of Ziegler’s face as she shifts to look up at him, eyebrows knit together. There’s a quiet crackle over N’s radio.

When she speaks, her voice is hushed.

“Rutledge knows where the Heart is?”

Junkrat blinks.

And blinks again.

Oh.

Well, fuck.

“Did I say that?” he says, too loudly, too many giggles, shut up, _shut up_. “Slip of the tongue! Didn’t mean a word! You know me, I — Always runnin’ my mouth, I am. Annoying, I know — disgusting, really. Someone—” He gulps. His grin contorts into a frown but he can’t stop laughing. “Someone oughta shut me up, eh? Right, N?”

He waits. Only the water answers him.

“N?”

She’s gone. Pissed off just like he wanted but not like this, _not like this._

He leans forward on the plank as it continues to recede beneath him, holding on for dear life. Ice cold puddles are making friends with places he’d really rather not have frozen off but he shivers and ignores it, cranes his neck just to get a better look at Ziegler down below.

“Oi, Doc, where’d she go?” he calls, but fuck, he’s not loud enough. “She’s not—”

_going to find Roadhog, is she?_

Shit.

“She—”

_‘s going to hurt him because of me_

He grinds out a frustrated scream, kicks out at the plank — but it’s already too short and his foot claps against the rocking water. He shrieks, tries to scramble back — nowhere to go, his back’s already against the wall—

The plank runs out. He plummets — hits the water flailing.

A thousand jagged, icy teeth bore into him and he opens his mouth to gasp. Water floods in, bites his throat, freezes him from the inside out. The steel tank sucks the life out of everything, turns his world black. Churning waves pummel him like giant palms, crushing his chest, _squeezing_. He flails like a leaf in the wind but the world is black and his eyes, wide open and burning, can’t see.

_Up, up, go up_

But there is no up. He’s directionless, twisted every which way by cruel watery hands, roaring in his ears and throwing hair into his eyes and crushing him.

He can’t breathe.

His throat constricts, his lungs beg to die. It’s so cold. Can’t feel his arm, his leg. Can’t feel himself anymore.

  
Can’t.

 

He can’t.

 

  
He prays to anyone, to anything, for a pair of massive hands to dive into the water. Rings on one, L. E. F. T. Black polish on the nails. Callouses. Scars. Fingers wrapping around his torso, crushing his ribs with the force it takes to pull him out.

 

 

They don’t.

 

 

  
He can’t breathe.

 

 

 

His mouth opens wide. His lungs greedily suck in anything they can find.

 

 

 

  
There is only water.

 

 

 

 

It fills him up, floods into every nook of him.

 

 

 

 

  
Chokes him.

 

 

 

 

 

Kills him.

 

 

 

 

 

  
Hurts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Darkness fades away into something darker… darker… until

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

His mouth opens. He hears himself gasp. He’s pulling a desperate breath into dry lungs, his back flush with something hard and cold. His chest is on fire, his throat, his mouth, his—

He flips himself over with limbs that feel like noodles. Water and bile force their way from his mouth. He hacks and splutters for what feels like an eternity before he registers movement on his back. A hand, rubbing tiny circles along the knobs of his spine. It’s warm against the ice that’s replaced his skin.

“Shh,” murmurs a voice. “I’ve got you.”

He breathes. Closes his eyes. Just _breathes_. It feels like he’s forgotten how. Still hurts, every breath feels like he’s swallowing gravel, but that voice is so soft and that hand is gentle and warm and he’s helpless to resist them. He’s weak, he knows, but he lets himself relish them, just for a moment.

He’s shaking. God, he’s shaking. Worse than his typical tremors, his body is being racked by cold and fear and horror because _fuck_ , he just drowned. They just let him drown, barely even gave him a chance to save himself. His life is as meaningless here as it was in the Outback.

When the last of the frigid fingers loosen around his chest, he gathers the strength to look away from the floor. Straight ahead, the airlock gapes at him, its twin blast doors left wide open. It’s dark beyond them, and the only remaining water within the tank is what’s dripping down the walls. A wet trail leads from the airlock to his legs and the cold puddle he’s trembling in. It’s quiet now, save for the faint murmur of working machinery and his rasping breaths.

That hand rubs his back. A soft, gentle caress. Thin fingers, a delicate wrist. Easy to snap. No straps or metal cuffs. His heart thuds.

There’s nothing holding him back.

He whips around with a snarl like a dingo, teeth bared. He doesn’t think about it — he sinks his teeth into the arm behind him. Ziegler’s eyes go wide. She utters a cry. Junkrat clamps down like he intends to devour her. Crooked teeth bore right through the sleeve of her lab coat until the hot taste of copper hits his tongue. She’s trying to bat him off, there’s fear in her eyes, but he’s dug in like a fish hook.

Then she falls back, splashes down into his puddle, and he unclamps his jaw. Scrambles to his feet. _Runs_.

He makes off in a one-legged shamble, reaching out for the wall and nearly collapsing against it in his rush. Every ragged breath tears through his sore throat. He spits out a glob of Ziegler’s blood, tastes it all over his lips, keeps running. He stumbles past the wheelchair, knocking it over when he uses it to propel himself forward — could’ve taken it with him, could’ve used it, too late now.

He’s left the ballast room but now he pauses, soaking and naked with blood dribbling down his chin. No idea where he is, no memory of this corridor or any of its brothers, all tubes and dripping grilles and the reek of mold.

He runs anyway. Grabs the grilles in the walls with trembling fingers as every hop slams his foot back to the ground. Hurts. It all hurts. Not enough to stop him, though.

Following the same corridor leads him to what he’s looking for — the elevator. He clambers aboard — too swiftly. Miscalculates his step and his toes curl into the slot between the floor and the lift, sends himself sprawling. He catches himself on his elbow and knee, hisses out a “shittin’ Christ” when the anti-slip grooves in the floor cut right through his skin.

Doesn’t matter, he tells himself, because he’s here, he did it, he’s one step closer to escape.

But then he stares at the lift controls and it all comes crumbling down. Beside the small panel of buttons, long and narrow like the pupil of a snake, is a slot for a keycard.

“No,” he croaks as he quivers, as he levers himself up onto his scraped knee. “No, no, c’mon, don’t do this to me.” He slams his palm down onto a button, any button, but it doesn’t light up. The elevator doesn’t even twitch.

It doesn’t work. Won’t work. Not now, not for him, not ever.

His poor leg simply quits. He slumps to the floor, huddles up in a shivering ball in the corner of the lift. Well, they can’t say he didn’t try. He did his best, but it wasn’t good enough. He mutters a laugh that sounds like he’s choking up water again. For one sordid moment, he actually felt a flicker of hope in his chest. Stupid. It’s gone now. So long.

“Idiot,” he mutters, grinds his palm into his stupid forehead and it stings his fresh cuts.

The squeak of a wheel makes him suck in a breath of thick air. He looks up like a deer caught in headlights. Ziegler stands in the doorway, eyebrows knit together, her hands wrapped tightly around the handles of the wheelchair in front of her. The sleeve of her lab coat is damp, still bright red, and he sees the shine of open flesh between the tears. The healing machine is still hanging by her hip like a purse. She hadn’t wasted any time to use it on herself.

She tries to board the elevator but Junkrat stops her with a growl as soon as the wheelchair makes it over the lip.

“Fuck off, why don’tcha,” he says, tries to contort his face into something dark and wild. “You like drownin’ folks, is that it? Fucked right up, you are. Piss off. Get stuffed. Suck my knob.”

She frowns. At first, he thinks that might have offended her enough to get her to actually leave, but then she releases the wheelchair and in a few shrugs has removed her lab coat. Yes, her arm is definitely still bleeding, stamped by the fucked up crescents of his teeth. Both hands hold the coat open in front of her as she reaches down, down. He tries to bite at her fingers but she pulls back with impressive speed. Her expression goes sharp and he instinctively shrinks away.

“Do not be stubborn, I’m trying to help,” she says. But she doesn’t move again, and she doesn’t stop blocking his only way out, and he doesn’t think he’d be able to get very far even if she wasn’t.

“Don’t,” he utters, and a shiver racks his frame. “Don’t you touch me. I’ll get you again, I’ll do it. Swear on me mum’s grave. I chewed off a bloke’s ear once, I — I’ll—” His lip quivers, his voice chokes. Fuck, he hates himself right now but he’s so tired. Hates that he has to battle tears while fighting for his life. Weak. _Stupid_.

Ziegler’s expression softens out again. It’s preferable to her frown but the pity he sees in her eyes makes him feel like there’s more bile on its way.

“You want this?” she asks, so softly. Junkrat merely stares at the coat with wide eyes, hackles raised like a cornered animal, as she lifts it up for him to see. It’s a bit damp, a bit bloody, but probably warm. Warmer than being naked. He doesn’t nod but she sees the want in his eyes.

“Then let me help you.”

Roadhog would never agree to this. He would spit in her face, drag her down by the neck, slam her face into the ground until it resembles ground beef. He would escape.

But neither would Roadhog be sitting naked in the corner of a lift, shivering, defeated, and halfway to giving up. Junkrat isn’t Roadhog. Junkrat might actually die here.

This time when Ziegler comes forward, he doesn’t move. He watches her like he expects her to pull out a knife and cut him to ribbons, but she doesn’t. She merely drapes the lab coat across his back, and when she returns to stand behind the wheelchair he dares to pull the coat tighter around his hunched shoulders.

“There,” she says, even smiles a little. “That wasn’t so bad.”

Her smile, her pity — it makes him feel sick. He doesn’t want either of them. Doesn’t deserve them. Patchy hair plastered against his scalp, eyes wide and bloodshot, teeth chattering — he knows he looks like a drowned rat. Technically, he thinks faintly, he is one. The thought pulls a violent titter from him that grates at his raw throat and makes Ziegler frown.

“I’m sorry this is happening to you,” she says, and the hurt that dawns on her face is so real that, despite everything, his first instinct is to believe her. But he smothers that feeling, refuses to acknowledge it. He just huddles as deeply as he can into the tiny lab coat.

“Where’s Roadhog?” he demands shakily, but his voice is so low and cracked that it’s hardly threatening.

She considers him for a moment. He can see the debate playing out on her face. Then, she lifts her arm — the one marred by toothy gouges.

“If you don’t do this again,” she says, “I will show you.”

But she’s smiling tentatively, and something about that draws a dry chuckle out of him.

“Dunno ‘bout that, mate. Your arm’s the tastiest thing I’ve had all week.”

Her brow furrows and he splutters to cover his tracks.

“Kidding, kidding! I — I won’t. I just” — _want to make sure he’s okay_ — “wanna see him.”

“I can give you that much.” She gestures down at the wheelchair. “Would you like to sit? I doubt you had a pleasant time getting this far.”

Yes, he would love to never have to hop anywhere ever again, but his eyes still whip across the wheelchair and the many undone restraints that hang from it like vines.

“No buckles,” he demands, and she nods.

“I agree. No buckles.”

_You have a death wish,_ says Hog’s voice in his head, but he drags himself to his foot anyway, tenderly lowers himself into the chair.

_Besides_ , he reasons, _already died twice, haven’t I, mate? How can I have a death wish if I can’t be offed?_

He giggles, but it’s really more of a series of breaths.

Ziegler swipes her keycard, hits a button, and the lift begins to rise. He’s not restrained by any means, but that doesn’t mean he’s not tense as all hell. The coat around his shoulders is damper than he is by now but it’s the only thing covering him up and he rather likes the protection at this point. Behind him, Ziegler is quiet. He casts a glance back at her, clears his throat.

“You, uh,” he mutters. “You usually give your other guests tours of the place?”

She chuckles faintly. “No, you are my first. N would object, but” — she squares her thin shoulders — “I refuse to be afraid of her anymore.”

“Just gonna whip out the slander, eh?” he snickers, but then licks his lips, glances into every corner half expecting the walls to be lined with disembodied eyes. “Ain’t she listenin’?”

“I have partial access to the security system. I can disable audio, if you’d like.”

He frowns. “That’s a lot of trust you’re puttin’ in me.”

“Yes,” she says, meeting his eyes. “It is.”

A bead of something wet dribbles down his temple. Not water — sweat. He brushes it away with a snort, looks away, but try as he might, her sentiment lingers in his head.

“Go on, then. Risk your life, risk your job, see what I care.”

He’s looked away so he doesn’t know what face she aims at the back of his head, but he hears a rustle as something is pulled from her pocket and glances back to investigate. She’s flicking her fingers across the screen of some kind of tablet. It’s not too big, certainly not heavy. He could steal it. But where would he take it, where would he hide it? How far would he get before she caught up and took him not to Roadhog, but to his own cell? He shakes his head to clear it of bad ideas and before long, she trains a tired little smile on him.

“Done.”

He eyes the device as she pockets it again. “Thought you were a doctor. Didn’t know you were a copper too.”

She utters the tiniest laugh he’s ever heard. “Being a doctor is my primary job, yes, but we are all required to take on extra duties here. We are… understaffed. Perhaps you’ve noticed.”

Junkrat thinks back to all the empty corridors and rooms, the same guards he seems to spot everywhere.

“Guess I have. This place is a ghost town.”

“Yes, well. Many of us left after N took over. Conflicts of interest tore everyone apart, as not everyone agreed with her methods. Most of us left.” Ziegler frowns. “I should have gone with them.”

The look of her makes Junkrat frown, too. Not because she looks so sad — no, of course not. It’s probably just the indigestion again.

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because,” she sighs, “as much as I would like to leave, I must be responsible for what I’ve created.” He doubts she does it on purpose, but her hand lingers by the healing machine at her side. Her eyes darken. “I won’t just move on to the next thing while my work is being abused.”

“Dunno how to tell you this,” he mutters, “but it’s still bein’ abused, mate. Seen it firsthand.” He lifts his hand, wiggles his fingers. “First _hand_. Get it?”

A look so pained and regretful crosses her face that he’s not sure if he should count this as a minor victory or hide his hand away and never show it to her again.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I am… genuinely sorry. I’ve enabled N to destroy this place — I’m just as responsible as she is.”

“Oh sure,” he says affably, “I bet this place used to be all sunshine and biscuits before you two.”

“No, of course it wasn’t, but it was better. It was meant to be a watchpoint. A _real_ watchpoint, like Gibraltar. Not N’s prison camp playground. We’re supposed to be helping people. I’m supposed to be saving lives so they can be lived, not so they can be destroyed again and again. She changed… everything.”

“Just kill the bitch and get it over with. Boom, problem solved.”

“That’s… not how things work here. Besides, who would do it? Me?” A strange look passes over her face before it’s gone, and she looks away from him. “I couldn’t. Though I do fear that might be the only way to get rid of her for good. My superiors do not listen when I go to them.” Her frown turns into a grimace and something dark churns behind her eyes. “They do not even care. They tell me that N’s work is necessary.”

She looks like she intends to go on but the elevator comes to a sudden halt with a little bump that jostles them back into reality. She blinks, takes a breath, grabs hold of the wheelchair again, but Junkrat can’t recover as easily. As they set out into a clean, familiar hallway, he’s still looking up at her, frowning. She can’t be very old, but the tired creases that line her face try to convince him otherwise.

“Say, uh,” he mumbles, fidgets with one of the coat’s buttons. “Why’re you even tellin’ me all this?”

She looks down at him as if surprised, as if the answer ought to be clear. “Well,” she says, “because. Who else here hates N as much as I do?”

He blinks… then bares his teeth in a grin. “Fair enough.”

When she finally wheels him right up to one of the corridor’s many doors, he practically flings himself out of the chair. Ziegler gives him some kind of warning but he doesn’t hear. He leans in so closely that the tip of his nose presses against the small square of glass that’s his only window into the room beyond — and the big, dark, lumbering man just out of reach.

“Roadhog,” he cries, pounds his fist against the metal. It makes his leg tremble weakly, makes the cuts on his palm sting, but he doesn’t stop.

“He can’t hear you,” says Ziegler’s apologetic voice but he ignores it. Roadhog is _there_ , standing and brooding and still unharmed — but he won’t be for long. Junkrat has to warn him even if the hammering breaks his fist, even if he screams his throat so raw that he never speaks again — no matter what.

“Hog!” He bashes his knee against the metal, rams his shoulder into it, splits the skin of his knuckles against it with a floundering punch. Roadhog doesn’t look at him. “You — stupid — arsehole—” A strike for each word. “Break outta here, you big lug! Thought you were the best! Thought you were better than me, huh? Then why’m I out here while — you’re — still—”

His leg gives out again and he slides down to the floor, still pounding weakly against the door. He feels that hand on his shoulder, delicate like a whisper, and this time he doesn’t lurch away from it.

“I’m sorry,” Ziegler says. “I am.” She hesitates, bites her lip, takes on what is only a mildly comforting tone. “As long as he has something she wants, N will not truly kill him.”

Junkrat snorts out a sob through his nose. The hand on his shoulder grows firm.

“You must return to your room. Quickly — N will be here soon.”

He can’t find it in him to fight back as she hauls him to his feet, as she helps him into the cell next door. As soon as he’s in, she takes her lab coat back and folds it across her forearm. Free from her grasp, he leans against the wall for support and eyes her with a dark look.

“Thought you said you weren’t afraid of her no more.”

“I’m not,” she says, frowning. “But you should be.”

Then she’s gone, and Junkrat is locked away once more. Knowing Roadhog is just on the other side, Junkrat drags himself along the wall that had been a window an eternity ago. He slumps to the ground, not for the first time that day. Lets his gangly, bony body curl into the ball it yearns to be, presses the curve of his spine against the concrete. Every inch of him aches. His heart aches. His lungs still feel like waterlogged sponges in his ribcage. He tastes copper on his tongue and he’s not sure if it’s more regurgitated water or Ziegler’s blood. His eye socket feels swollen and dry, the guts of his wrist itch.

He rasps, “Forget about me, Hog. Just get outta here.”


	6. Chapter 6

The sleeping gas begins its slow creep into Roadhog’s room, and he isn’t ready. By the time it’s condensed into visible wisps in the air he knows he’s already inhaled too much of it. His thoughts turn fuzzy at the edges, the world fades out as his eyes threaten to close. Damn whoever had taken his gas mask from him.

For a while, it’s just like he’s sleeping.

He wakes up, and he can’t move. It doesn’t occur to him to figure out why at first, as he blows a few strands of hair out of his eyes and tries to blink away the grogginess. Slowly, the details come to him. Strapped into a stiff metal chair — must be sturdy if it can take his weight. Restraints — but not the ones built into the chair. He looks down at them, snorts to see that the metal cuffs extending out of the base and armrests had been deemed too small for him and left undone. Someone had improvised by tightening a few zip ties around his wrists and ankles. He gives them an experimental tug but they’re tight, already cutting into his hard muscle. He could cut off his circulation if he pulls too hard. Not sure he’s desperate enough for that yet.

He’s awake enough now to inspect the rest of his surroundings and when he looks up, he gets a faceful of clinical light. Some kind of lamp, needlessly bright — maybe to mask whatever’s hanging above it. Roadhog sees the promising glint of metal, the vague outline of many things sharp and serrated. It doesn’t take a genius to guess what’s about to happen here.

When he looks back down, he’s not alone. N’s hologram has appeared before him like a grim apparition, looking stiffer than usual. Eyebrows drawn down, mouth in a tight line — she’s on the edge. It’s a good look for her. Would be better with her skull caved in.

“You didn’t tell me you know the location of the omnicardium,” she says.

Roadhog grunts, “You didn’t ask.”

“I didn’t think Mr. Fawkes would have shared such delicate information with his bodyguard.” She scowls. “My mistake.”

He smells trouble here but he can’t help the swell of pride he feels, the faint satisfaction. One, Junkrat hasn’t given in yet — still going strong. Two, N doesn’t know everything, try as she might to convince him otherwise. She hadn’t delved so far into their pasts that she knew Junkrat had told him the location of the omnicardium ages ago. Stooped together under the sparse shade of a tree, red sand sticking to the tacky blood that coated their bodies. Junkrat, with quiet urgency in his voice, sure he was about to die. Roadhog made sure he didn’t.

She hadn’t delved that far. She doesn’t know. And that means there’s plenty more she doesn’t know about them.

At least she’s bothering him now instead of Junkrat.

N doesn’t wait for him to say anything. Fine by him. He’s not feeling very chatty right now.

“You’re a busy man,” she says. “I’m a busy woman. I’ll cut to the chase.” Somehow, her expression grows darker. “Where have you hidden the Heart?”

Not a word leaves Roadhog’s lips. Barely a wheezing breath. They exchange glares for a moment while she waits for an answer she knows she won’t hear, while he waits for her to do her worst.

“I see,” she says, and he can tell by the way her brows twitch that she’s having a hell of a time trying to keep her cool. “In that case, I believe we finally get to spend some quality time together. Care to help me blow off some steam?”

_I do yours, you do mine,_ Roadhog thinks.

Without further preamble, he hears the soft whir of machinery as something shifts overhead. He glances up, sees the contraption come into view around the lamp. It’s a tangle of metal arms, twitching like the legs of a spider as it descends on its web. One of the arms folds out on a metal hinge and he tries to keep his expression impassive in the face of the tool on its end. Long, thick, and sturdy, grinning at him with gleaming metal teeth.

The bone saw reminds him sickeningly of Junkrat.

“There’s plenty of meat on your bones,” N says appraisingly. “Oh, this could last all day.” Her eyes narrow. “And then some.”

The blade begins its slow descent and it’s all Roadhog can do to stare it head-on. He tugs at the zip ties around his wrists again but huh, surprise, they’re not any looser. It’s not that he’s afraid of pain. No, he’s the causer of pain, a one-man apocalypse. What he doesn’t like is being tied down, subjected to someone else’s will. He supposes he’s going to have to find a way out of this.

The saw hovers somewhere above his stomach while N rakes her eyes over him.

“Hmm,” she murmurs. “Where should we start, then? Perhaps… here?”

The tip of the saw kisses the bulge of his gut, cold like a slab of ice against his skin. Every breath presses him into the serrations. He says nothing, only glares.

The saw lifts away.

“But no, you wouldn’t last very long at all if we did that. Our fun would end before it even began,” N says. She’s giving him that look again, like he’s a piece of meat and she’s the butcher. “Then maybe… here.”

The metal arm reaches down, swings around to the right… and perches on his arm. Right below the crook of his elbow.

Roadhog says nothing.

“I’ll leave you a little gift to remember me by.” The serrated teeth press down into his skin, drawing tiny beads of blood. “Or vice versa, rather.”

Not. A. Word.

“I’ll give you a chance. You know what I want.”

He envisions jamming two fingers into her mouth, thumb under her chin, and tearing her jaw asunder.

“Unfortunate. You can’t tell me I didn’t try.”

The saw starts a slow grind into him, seesawing with leisure, and he guns her down with his dark eyes. He wishes he had his mask so he could train lifeless lenses on her instead — tends to be much more intimidating when your adversaries forget that you’re human — but no, she had taken it from him. For that, she has to deal with the eyes of death on her at all times. Whatever happens, he won’t look down at his arm. N doesn’t get the privilege of escaping his gaze.

He feels the pull and sting as teeth snag on his arm hair, the blistering itch as they part his flesh in what must be a nasty, ragged line. Something hot dribbles down the cut of his muscles to pool under his forearm. Stings a bit but he’s trying to ignore it. The white-hot anger flaring in his chest makes it an easy task.

“Mr. Rutledge? How does this feel?”

The unpleasant rending sensation makes him want to shut his eyes, block the world out and go far, far away, but he doesn’t. He meets her gaze, stares her down, tries to kill her with a single look. It makes a vein in her neck pulse.

“Not feeling very talkative, are we?” she says. “I can’t relate. I’ve never lost an arm before. I don’t imagine it’s very pleasant.”

Nothing. Seesaw, seesaw. Grind. A spurt of red. His fingers twitch.

“Just below the elbow,” she says. “That’s right. You and Mr. Fawkes are going to match. Unless, of course, you tell me what I want to hear.”

Without breaking eye contact, Roadhog spits at her. The glob goes sailing right through her holographic face but her features contort as if it had splattered against her cheek. Her lips twitch. The saw gives a violent hack into his flesh that actually draws a hiss out of him.

“What was it you said?” N says. A shadow passes over her face. Too late for regret, Roadhog thinks.

“Don’t,” she hisses, “fuck with me.”

The saw draws back… then dives. Grinds against bone. Nerves. His fingers spasm. Difficult to ignore. He breaks eye contact when his eyes squeeze shut, when his chest heaves.

He feels very little when the saw slices easily through a cluster of plastic ties, when the metal arm pivots and nudges the remnants of his arm onto the floor. At his elbow he feels fucking plenty, but in his heart? Fucking nothing. Today, apathy is not his enemy but an old friend. Apathy keeps his face clear of anything more than a furrowed brow and a grimace even as beads of sweat roll down his forehead.

N frowns. He follows her eyes down to his disembodied hand and wrist, then back up to him. It’s only there for a second, a flash on her face as quick and livid as lightning, but he sees it. _Disappointment_.

“I see,” she mutters. “High pain tolerance.”

He watches the wheels in her head turn for a fraction of a second and he thinks he knows what to expect. If the fear of physical pain doesn’t sway him, there’s only one other kind she can utilize against him.

The saw is quickly replaced by two other smaller tools. One, a thin pair of steel pliers — the other, some kind of prong-like device that clamps down on his fingers to keep them immobile. The pliers lower to meet its twin by his hand.

His only hand, he thinks numbly. He’ll have to think up some hand jokes for Junkrat. Gonna be tough — the kid’s already taken all the good ones.

It occurs to him that he’s going to die of blood loss in a few minutes. He gets the feeling that N isn’t particularly bothered by that.

Currently, she’s stepped up to the foot of his chair to loom over his hand and the little tools. They’re dwarfed by the size of his palm but he doubts that’s why he can see the muscles of her face working to regain their calm, nonchalant facade. They’re doing a shit job, he thinks.

She leans in to inspect his fingernails, clicks her tongue. “Now,” she murmurs, “these are just a mess, aren’t they?”

He doesn’t know about that. Sure, the varnish is cracked and uneven and the surrounding skin is marked by black smudges but he’s not here to be judged.

“What do you say we start over?” N says. The muscles of her face give up their foolhardy task, let her expression go as dark as her voice. “From scratch.”

By the time his frazzled mind realizes what’s happening, it’s too late. The pliers clamp down on the edge of his first fingernail. They give a great wrench, at odds with the device holding his knuckles down. He doesn’t look. Hears a soft rip, a wet peeling. It burns like rubbing alcohol on an open wound. There’s a quiet clatter as something small and painted is tossed aside.

“There we go. You’re looking better already.”

The pliers move on, grasp his next fingernail. The metal grinds, chips off some of the nail polish. Little black flakes fall, fall.

Roadhog looks, and it’s a mistake. In N’s place he sees Junkrat, face screwed up in concentration, tongue jutting out between his teeth — painstakingly applying coat after coat with the little brush pinched between his fingers—

Slowly this time. The nail is torn from his finger like a bandage being peeled away. Roadhog grits his teeth, huffs out a breath through his nose.

The pliers move on. More nail polish chipped away, and it’s Junkrat, still at his hand, putting as much effort into this as he puts into his bombs. Unblinking, breath held, trying so hard not to botch the job but his hands are shaking, always shaking, and the brush glides too far, leaves a streak of black on skin. He stammers an apology, disappointed in himself more than anything, frustrated, embarrassed, but Mako doesn’t mind, he loves him, fuck, he loves him—

_Rip._

“Tell me, are you feeling this? Do you feel anything at all anymore? Is it the radiation? What happened to you in Australia? Am I not trying hard enough? Do you need me to try harder?”

He’s had enough of this. He can feel the dizziness from the blood loss setting in and it makes him desperate to shut his eyes. He’s not dying… not yet. The pain’s bad, but not the worst he’s ever felt. He might be able to get through this on sheer willpower if he tries. Can’t stave off death forever, but perhaps for a while. As long as Junkrat needs him to.

But for now, he needs to forget about Junkrat. Needs to forget about Mako and black nail polish and loud motorcycles with dented sidecars. He needs to be Roadhog, needs to be less than Roadhog. He needs to be nothing — an animal.

Finally, he allows his eyes to close. The last thing he sees is N perk up, her attention caught, her dark eyes glimmering.

“Where are you going, Mr. Rutledge?”

Away.

Far away.

Just like he always used to.

Used to… It used to be so easy. The void in his heart used to be all-consuming, ever eager to devour him whenever he let it. Mid brawl — when he was desperate — when the quiet nights and endless desert begged his mind to think of the past. That’s who Roadhog is.

Or, that’s who Roadhog was.

He hasn’t done this in a long time. Not since the last, when he woke up with gore on his hands and mask, assaulted by the reek of death and the sting of Junkrat’s eyes on him. Thick fingers wrapped around a wiry neck and its fluttering heartbeat. Hands — one flesh, one metal — scrabbling at his wrist. He went too far. Lost himself. Promised himself he wouldn’t do it again.

But now, he tells himself to let go.

Let go. Go away. Far away.

  
Until the world is nothing but a primal void.

 

And all there is is darkness.

 

  
Silence.

 

 

  
The beat of a heart.

 

 

 

  
“Right… then another right… and maybe, er… a left?”

Roadhog’s eyes snap open. His head whips around, searching the room — he heard Junkrat, heard him nearby, sounds upset, where is he — but nothing has changed. His right arm burns like it’s been dipped in acid. The fingers of his left hand throb. Junkrat is not here — but N is, and her eyes are wide with a dark curiosity that brings him plummeting back to reality.

“Well,” she murmurs, “that brought you back nice and fast, didn’t it?”

Roadhog just stares at her, sweat dripping down his nose, and then—

“No, four of ‘em. Four right turns. Or… was it three?” Junkrat’s voice again. It’s tinny, like the voices on the radio, and Roadhog realizes. It’s just the audio feed from the next room. He feels like an idiot.

Junkrat makes a noise of frustration. “Shit. Can’t remember. Fucked it up again, didn’t I? Sorry. Fucked up real bad. I’m sorry…”

The anguish in his voice is what does Roadhog in. Something must show on his face because N suddenly looks at him like her foul mood had never even existed… like she’s just had an idea.

Again, Roadhog chastises himself. He’s too used to his face being hidden behind a mask. He’s just given himself away, he knows it, because not even the torture had drawn this much out of him.

“Angela,” N calls. She looks like she’s trying not to smile, and it makes the world crash down around him. “Get to work before Mr. Rutledge bleeds out, would you? I want him lucid for this.”

Roadhog doesn’t have time to question what she means by that. The door opens the next second to permit a very pale, tired-looking woman and the odd machine strapped to her side. N’s hologram merely watches as she steps forward, right up to the foot of his chair. Eyes big and earnest, devoid of fear.

She’s not afraid. It’s the last mistake she’s ever going to make.

“My name is Dr. Ziegler,” she says. He barely listens. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

She grabs a detachable device from her machine, lifts it up to his arm. She leans in.

He headbutts her with all the strength he can afford. Their skulls crack together with a sound like thunder. He feels her nose collapse under the hammer-face of his forehead.

The room is quiet as she staggers back, eyes wide from a different cause now, mouth slightly agape. A delicate hand floats up toward the bloody remains of her nose as she stares on in shock. She sways on her feet.

“Angela,” says N’s voice through the ringing in Roadhog’s ears. “Out. Now.”

Ziegler says not a word as she leaves the room, too stunned to do anything but obey. N’s staring at him with daggers but he can’t be bothered to care. His forehead’s throbbing like a motherfucker. He wonders if it’ll bruise before he bleeds out.

“It seems,” N says darkly, “that for some reason, you want to die, Mr. Rutledge.”

_I’m dying either way. It’s gonna be on my terms._

“Unfortunately, I can’t allow that to happen. Not yet. Not while I still have use for you. But you’ve refused to cooperate so now I have no option but to make you cooperate.

“Good night, Mr. Rutledge.”

He’ll have to thank her for her wit later. This time, he’s prepared for the sleeping gas.

With no time to waste and even less energy, he sucks in a huge breath of air as inconspicuously as he can. It fills his lungs, expands his stomach, makes his arm hurt, for some reason. He tells his body the lack of air is just from another asthma attack. He gets over it. White tendrils begin to waft about the room and he lets his head loll back in due time. It’s not difficult to pretend to be out, considering this is the position his dying body wants him to take anyway.

His chest feels like it’s being crushed by a dozen relentless hands, he starts to worry he might actually pass out if he keeps this up, and then he hears the gas valves shut off. He waits for the vents to suck the remaining gas away, and then he hears the sound he’s been waiting for.

The door opens.

He peers through his eyelashes and watches the three guards that have entered the room. They approach him, swift and silent, their eyes hidden behind masks, and each of them take a pair of blunted wire cutters to the zip ties that restrain him.

One tie gone.

Two.

Three.

Roadhog’s eyes fly open. He lashes out with his arm (only arm) and grips one of the guards by the neck, hurls her into the body of another. They crash to the floor, their masks going askew. Roadhog lurches to his feet — too quickly. His head swims. Lights dance in his vision and he sways.

A spark of electricity to his right, a swing.

The electrified cattle prod nails him in the back, brandished by the third guard. It jolts him, makes his teeth rattle, but it’s not enough. Oh, it’s not nearly enough. Roadhog whips around, tears the prod away from the guard, and drives it straight through the clenched wall of his teeth. Enamel shatters. The guard shudders and screams as the wattage fries the inside of his throat, as Roadhog shoves it deeper. The man crumples, and Roadhog lets him.

One down.

Behind him, the other two guards are getting back up. Before the nearest can climb to her feet, Roadhog catches her head in his massive hand. He hears her gasp. Hears each ear-splitting crack as he drives her forehead into the wall again and again, without remorse. Her skin gives away, splattering the concrete. Her bones splinter. Bits of scalp and gray matter ooze through his fingers.

Two down.

The third guard bolts for the door while Roadhog lets the second fall to the floor. He doesn’t get far. Roadhog reaches for his head, easily grasps it in his gore-coated palm. He leaves bloody fingerprints on the guard’s visor as he turns to face N’s hologram. He holds the man up by his head until his feet leave the ground. The frantic whimpers are music to his ears.

Roadhog _squeezes_. The skull cracks in his hand, then collapses. The visor contorts under his fingers, revealing the guard’s twisted, screaming face. Roadhog lets his fingers dig into the guard’s eye sockets, squeezes until he feels the eyes collapse and turn to jelly. It stings against the raw caps of his fingers. He doesn’t notice.

He holds the body there. Waits. N stares back, and it’s like time has frozen. Her face is still, hard to read, but her lips are slightly parted, her eyebrows raised, her eyes locked on him. He can see the rise and fall of her chest, every stuttering blink. There’s something there, and the fact that she hasn’t covered it up yet says a great deal.

She’s afraid of him.

Her hologram blinks out without a word. She’s gone. He’s alone.

The guard is certainly dead, and Roadhog drops him to the floor. He pants, wheezes. Fights not to sway on his feet even as he goes lightheaded. His severed arm is bleeding heavily and he can’t even begin to guess which smatterings of blood are from the guards, which are his. There’s a lot of them. A lot of blood. A lot of stuff that isn’t blood but adds to the mess all the same. That stunt’s going to be what does him in. Stupid. Worth it.

Suddenly, the chair recedes into a hatch in the floor behind him. The metal contraption and all of its tools does the same. And then the concrete wall becomes a window, and Roadhog hears his wheezing go quiet.

N is in Junkrat’s room. And Junkrat, his eyes red and hair damp, is strapped into a chair not unlike the one Roadhog just escaped. He looks awful — a quivering mess that can barely sit still. The audio feed is still live — Roadhog can hear the nervous noises coming out of him, hybrid giggles and whimpers that don’t quite know what they want to be.

“That,” Junkrat starts, but has to gulp and try again. “That was fast. Thought you went to fuck with Hog.”

“I did,” N says, and that makes Junkrat’s eyes darken with simultaneous fury and horror.

“Fuck off, you did. You wouldn’t be back here already.”

“I left him to bleed out.”

Junkrat’s face falls. Roadhog feels a twinge in his gut that has nothing to do with his arm.

“You… you didn’t. You’re lyin’. You — you won’t let him die for good, you’ll just bring him back. Just like you do with me. Just kill us both over and over again, that’s what you like to do, innit? You’ll just bring him back.”

“That depends on how I’m feeling at the end of this session. As of right now, however, I’m inclined to say Mr. Rutledge doesn’t have very much time left.”

Junkrat’s head whips to the side, his eyes frantically scanning the wall. He comes so close to making eye contact with Roadhog that it’s obvious he’s searching for him even through the concrete. Looking for him. Desperate for him. Roadhog frowns. Hurts.

“I’ll,” Junkrat says, but Roadhog hears the uncertainty in his voice. “I’ll never tell you nothin’.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” N murmurs. “Someone will.”

It’s horrible, the sudden fear in his wide eyes. He’s only beginning to realize where she’s going with this, but Roadhog knew immediately. Junkrat might be the one in the chair, but it’s not him she’s trying to drag a confession from.

“Let’s see,” N says, “where should we start? We’re a bit pressed for time, so maybe an old favorite?”

Junkrat’s eyes only grow wider as the mechanical contraption above him reaches down with an arm, as it brandishes its long needle.

“No— No, c’mon, not — not this. Somethin’ else, c’mon you — you bitch! We’ve been through this, it don’t work! I won’t— You can’t make me— No, please—”

N hums a low tune as the needle breaches Junkrat’s eye. It’s quickly drowned out by loud, desperate, screeching laughter.

Roadhog doesn’t want to watch but he can’t look away. Can’t turn his back on him. Won’t. Not ever.

If Roadhog’s going to die, the least he can do is make sure Junkrat doesn’t.

It’s impossible to block out the frantic pleas from the next room as he squats down beside the corpse of a guard. A slow, trembling hand with three missing fingernails reaches down to rip the jacket off the body, wraps it clumsily around the bleeding stump of his right arm. It’s too late to truly help but it might buy him a few minutes. His head rushes as he stands back up but he fights through it. Faces the one-way glass head-on. Braces himself.

He charges. His shoulder slams into the wall with a mighty thud. Again. Again. Something cracks, but it isn’t the glass. His makeshift tourniquet isn’t doing shit. Junkrat is gasping and babbling meaningless threats on the other side. The screams. Oh God, the screams. Roadhog can’t tune them out.

It hurts. It hurts and he deserves to hurt for letting this happen. He wishes N would come back and interrogate him instead, prod his eyes with needles and slice off his other arm, he doesn’t care. For ruining Junkrat, himself, his home, he deserves it. It hurts. He supposes his dying body hurts a little, too.

The glass doesn’t break and Roadhog steps back, grasping his aching shoulder. Can’t brute force it — needs a tool. Needs a weapon. He twists around again — too fast, makes his head spin, makes him stumble. He tries to get it together as he searches through each of the three corpses. He finds only ID cards and cattle prods. Useless, the lot of it. Fucking useless. His chest heaves, he wheezes. Hard to breathe. He’s really going to die here.

Quietly, there’s a ragged moan from the next room.

“Mako…”

Roadhog is at the glass in an instant, drawn to it like a magnet. Junkrat is limp in the chair, his body softly rocked by only the occasional tremor. The needle’s been removed from his eye at least, but his head is angled away and Roadhog wouldn’t be able to assess the damage even if his eyes were open.

“With you, boss,” he says, quiet and rasping. Christ, he sounds like shit.

“Bloody,” Junkrat utters, “bloody Heart… Useless piece of junk…”

N leans in close, her eyes dark and predatory. “Yes? The omnicardium? Where is it?”

“Can’t… Need it…”

Roadhog wonders if he’s even conscious.

“But you don’t,” N says softly. “You have no use for it, you don’t want to make omnics. Let me safeguard it for you. I’ll keep it safe.”

“No… Need it…” Junkrat’s eyes flutter open, just a little. He mutters something, quiet and inaudible, and then…

“If I don’t have it,” he croaks, “he won’t stay.”

More inane babbling, N must think. Useless to her.

But the words pierce Roadhog like a bullet to his heart.

Can’t be. That can’t be why. Junkrat can’t be that stupid. It’s about the money — has to be. Has to be about the prospect of selling it, the lure of luxury, the food, the freedom.

But N offered to buy the omnicardium. Her price had been high. They could have ridden countless cruise ships, _bought_ those cruise ships, traveled to New Zealand and taken their pick of any private beach. N had tried to buy and Junkrat refused, every time.

Roadhog feels ill. The kid _is_ that stupid. It’s not about the money. Had stopped being about the money a long time ago.

N strikes Junkrat across the cheekbone with the elbow of the metal arm. “Pay attention, Mr. Fawkes. Tell me where the Heart is.”

Junkrat’s dragged back to attention with a gasp. He recovers quickly, eyes wide open now, blood and other fluids dribbling down his face. He scowls at her, and Roadhog feels a stab of pride at how fearlessly he faces her.

“I’d rather die.”

“Oh,” N murmurs, almost sweetly, “you’re not going to die. I’m not going to kill you, not permanently, at least. Until I get what I want, this is going to last. Maybe forever. If you do happen to die, we’ll just bring you back, again and again.”

Junkrat shudders, he grimaces. He just has to open his stupid mouth.

“Just fuckin’ kill me and get it over with, you prick! You fuckin’ — wankers, the lot of you! If you’re gonna off me, do it proper. Can’t even let a bloke die. You’re real shit, y’know that? Not even good at your job — can’t get me to tell you a damn thing!”

“You talk too much,” is all N says. “I think I’ll cut out your tongue.”

Junkrat blanches. He stammers. Roadhog thinks it’s not the blood loss that’ll end up killing him, but the look on Junkrat’s face.

“Y-you can’t do that, mate. How’m I supposed to tell you where me treasure is if — if you—”

The metal contraption reaches down with a device like prongs and a pair of gleaming scissors.

“Any last words?” N says.

Junkrat merely thrashes, screams through gritted teeth.

Roadhog can barely stand. He’s not sure if it’s the screams or the blood loss that make his legs want to give out.

The prongs take to Junkrat’s mouth and prop it open. The muscles in his jaw work as he tries to bite down on it, to spit it out, but he can’t. He realizes it, and the panic truly sets in.

It’s not about the money. Junkrat doesn’t care about the money.

The scissors shine under the glare of the lamp. Twin blades, impossibly sharp. They move in for the kill.

Roadhog finds that he doesn’t much care for the money either.

“Eyre Crater,” he says, rumbles it out on a wheeze.

Everything stops. N freezes. All anyone can hear is Junkrat’s ragged, open-mouthed gasps.

“South crater,” Roadhog utters. “Dead center. Buried two meters down.”

N looks at him, straight through the one-way glass.

Then she’s gone. The device releases Junkrat, makes him splutter and gasp and shake. The restraints release him and for a moment, he’s too shocked, too wary, too confused, to realize he can leave the chair. But then he does, frantically, and he crumples to the floor as the chair folds away behind him. It’s quiet — so quiet — save for Junkrat’s breathing.

A sigh leaves Roadhog’s mouth. He sways, finally lets himself give in, and he slides down to the floor like a sack of bricks. Leans against the glass and ignores the blood and guts that stick to his shoulder. Through his swimming vision he sees Junkrat edge toward him, lean right up against him on the other side of the window. His face is the picture of confusion, his bloodshot eyes ever flicking toward the door as if he’s expecting someone to come after him at any moment. He says nothing, and Roadhog says nothing back. Junkrat wouldn’t be able to hear him, anyway. Can’t even see him. But that doesn’t seem to stop him from knowing he’s there.

Slowly, shakily, Junkrat puts his hand up against the wall. Long, knobbly fingers, calloused palm lined by little scars. Trembling. Familiar. Lovely. Alive.

With what little strength he has left, Roadhog places his hand up against Junkrat’s. Dwarfs it. Trembling, too. Three fingernails missing and coated in crusted guts, his and other’s.

It’s all he can do.

He hopes Junkrat will be okay without him.

 

* * *

 

By the time N returns, Roadhog feels like he’s become a fixture in the room. Unmoving, barely breathing. He let his eyes close a long time ago but death simply refuses to take him. He started to wonder if Hell wanted as little to do with him as the rest of the world.

N’s there, but he doesn’t know it until she speaks, calm and cordial.

“We have retrieved the omnicardium. Thank you, Mr. Rutledge. You’ve done the world a great service.”

He doesn’t open his eyes. Doesn’t think he can. He hears the soothing voice of Dr. Ziegler in Junkrat’s room over the audio feed, thanking him and telling him he’s going to be all right. If Junkrat says anything, he doesn’t hear it.

“You an AI?” Roadhog says, barely.

“No, I’m not.” He hears the frown in her voice. “I’m as human as you are.”

He thinks of a hundred potential responses.

_So not very, then._

_Couldn’t tell._

_I’m going to drown you in your own blood._

_I’m going to drown you in my blood._

_Expect a grenade in the mail._

He says, “Good.”

A moment of silence, and when he peers through half lidded eyes, N is gone. He hears her in the other room, hears Ziegler along with her. Doesn’t hear Junkrat.

“You’ve taken care of Mr. Fawkes?”

“I have. And I’m going to take care of Mr. Rutledge as well.”

A tense silence.

“After what he did to you?”

“He gave you what you wanted. I will not let him die.”

“Very well. When you’re done… take them to hangar zero.”

“Zero?” Ziegler says. “No — you said they would be free to go!”

“And they are. All roads lead to Rome, as the saying goes.”

Roadhog lets his eyes shut again, lets himself start to fade away. Faintly, he’s glad Junkrat isn’t around to hear what N says next.

“And you could say that the ocean leads to all rivers.”


	7. Chapter 7

Well, he’s alive.

Roadhog’s not sure how but here he is, alive and well enough. He’s still missing a few bits — namely his mask and those three fingernails N had removed — but oddly enough, the one thing that isn’t missing is his arm. Huh. Weird. He’s not really sure how that had happened, either. Upon waking up, he had a hell of a time flexing his fingers and bending his joints to make sure the thing was even real. He wouldn’t put it past N to fuck with him like that but no, it’s flesh and blood, just how it should be right down to the moles. Not even a scar where N had made her gnarly incision. Weird. Fucking weird.

He supposes that explains why Junkrat looked physically unharmed. It might have relieved anyone else to see their partner in one piece but it only fans the furious flame in Roadhog’s chest. Yes, Junkrat looks fine, but the real damage was still done, hidden beneath the skin. Not seen, only felt. Roadhog knows. He’s still in one piece, too.

He woke up from his temporary death in Ziegler’s dreaded hangar zero. As it turns out, it’s not much of a hangar at all. Hangars are for aircraft, for boats, for machines — wide open areas to permit cargo and maneuverability. When he woke up, he found himself in a room more similar to the holding cells than anything that was supposed to permit a jet or chopper. One door — the one he’d presumably been brought through. Worse lighting than the holding cells, dim except for a single red light in the ceiling. Colder, mustier. The floor is odd, like a giant panel that doesn’t quite connect to the walls. He knows what Junkrat would say.

_Maybe they call it a hangar ‘cause this is where their prisoners take off, eh?_ A laugh. A rumbling groan.

It hasn’t been long but he’s tired of waiting. He wants to hear that laugh for real.

As if on cue, the door slides open. There’s a shock of frazzled hair, bugged out eyes and wide shoulders. Roadhog’s breath catches.

The guard standing behind Junkrat dumps him unceremoniously out of the wheelchair, leaving him to stumble on one leg. Then the guard is gone, the door closes, and Junkrat wobbles.

“Fuck,” he says, doesn’t know where to look.

Roadhog reaches out to steady him, hand against his chest. He feels a fluttering heartbeat beneath his palm, a long-fingered grip around his wrist. Amber eyes on his, aflame.

“Hog,” is all Junkrat manages to say with his mouth, but his face says plenty more.

Roadhog hurriedly looks him over and finally, he doesn’t have to keep his expression blank anymore. No wounds — eye looks okay — isn’t crying, thank God. They gave him a pair of shorts to wear, at least, but Roadhog still feels the urge to cover him up with his arms and hide him away from everything forever.

“Roadhog,” Junkrat insists, and now he’s all urgency. “What’s goin’ on? We gettin’ outta here?”

Roadhog grunts. _Ideally._

“What’s happening? Are we escaping?”

Another grunt. “Not escaping.”

Confusion in his eyes, a hint of hope. “Then you scared ‘em off, killed a few pricks, made ‘em want us gone.”

“No.”

“Blackmail?”

“Rat, it’s over,” Roadhog says. “I told them.”

He’s glad he’s holding Junkrat steady with two hands now because the kid gives him a look like he’s about to keel over. Lips parted, eyes wide, face pale. He gives a sickly little tremble.

“You,” he croaks, “you what?”

Roadhog wants to explain. He doesn’t get the chance. The light above their heads begins to flash, dousing them in alternating black and crimson. An alarm blares. His hands instinctively tighten around Junkrat’s shoulders when he tries to pull away. With a great whir, something behind him begins to shift. He whips his head around, stares at the horizontal slash of darkness that’s appeared at the base of the far wall. It only grows, bathing them in cold moonlight, because the entire wall is lifting away to reveal a vast, moonlit ocean and a sky dotted with stars.

Hangar zero is not a hangar. It’s an airlock.

The frigid wind makes Roadhog’s hair thrash about his face, raises goosebumps on his arms, but the cold isn’t what makes Junkrat suddenly press into his side. No, his wide eyes are glued to the black ocean far beneath them.

“Thought you said they’re lettin’ us go!”

“Technically,” Roadhog mutters, “they are.”

He dares to lean away from Junkrat for a moment to glance over the edge. It’s a sheer drop from here to the water — enough to kill a smaller man. Maybe Junkrat. Not Roadhog, but he’d rather not take that chance. If he plays his cards right, he can get them out of this. The other door might have its weaknesses — with the two of them, they could potentially break through it somehow.

All his planning grinds to a halt when the floor beneath their feet begins to move. It rises on one side — tilting them directly toward the ocean.

“Hog,” Junkrat says, frantically grabbing at his shoulder, his back, any fold of skin he can clamp his fingers around. “Roadhog—”

“Got you,” Roadhog says, holds him close. He can’t think of a way out of this — the rising floor is blocking their only way out and his bare feet are already starting to slip on the polished metal. Junkrat feels it as they lurch toward the open maw of the airlock and his hand flies to Roadhog’s hair, gathers it up in a white-knuckled fist.

“Mako—”

The anguish in his voice makes Roadhog hold him tighter.

The floor’s angle is too steep. His feet slip. He takes Junkrat with him.

Together, they plummet.

Wind howls in his ears. Cold — sharp like the fingernails digging into his scalp.

“Feet down,” he shouts, because Junkrat’s practically curled into the fetal position against his stomach. “Jamison — feet down!”

Junkrat, senselessly, without opening his eyes: “But I only got one foot!”

No time to think. Roadhog surrounds him with his arms, his shoulders, everything he’s got. Covers his mouth and nose with one hand.

Roadhog hits the water first. He crashes into the waves with a splash that flays his skin and it’s like lightning ice has struck every inch of him. He feels his heart thud and stutter, feels an ache as his muscles go stiff. The waves batter him, pummel him into an icy darkness. The salt stings the raw flesh of his missing fingernails.

He finally opens his eyes because Junkrat is thrashing about like he wants to fucking sink.

Roadhog pins him to his chest with a single arm, waves his other one around to try and orient himself in this twisting void. The body against his is wily, simultaneously clinging and trying to escape like his life depends on accomplishing both. Needs to knock it off because if they hit any of the island’s rocky outcrops, they’re both dead—

But then he rights himself, and he sees. The great mass that is Watchpoint Aberdeen looms before them, massive and as black as the depths below, and there are no rocks. No cliffs. Only smooth, rounded metal. He sees grand rudders and slumbering propellers and knows by Junkrat’s bubbly outcry that he’s seen them too.

Right. Need to breathe.

With one arm pinning Junkrat to his chest, Roadhog begins a strenuous paddle to the surface. They breach the water, surge up into the cold night air, and—

“Shitting dicks,” Junkrat gasps. “Cunting Christ.”

He scrambles onto Roadhog’s shoulders like a small animal — only, the problem is, he’s not a small animal, and he knees Roadhog in the nose several times.

“Junkrat. Relax.”

“No, fuck you, I won’t relax. We’re in the middle of the bleedin’ ocean, mate, where the fuck are we gonna go?”

Hard to think while he’s trying to keep two bodies afloat. Hard to think when every wave tries to pull him back under and a trembling hand keeps tugging at his hair.

“How far do y’think Scotland is from here?” Junkrat says, audibly chewing on his lip. “Aberdeen’s in Scotland, right? You’re a good swimmer, aren’t you?”

Like hell he’s swimming to Scotland.

“It’s not an island,” he says.

“Yeah, I noticed. Weird, that.”

“Got an idea. Gotta go under again.”

He thinks he hears every one of Junkrat’s hopes and dreams die. “Roadie, I trusted you.”

“Hold your breath.”

They both do, and Roadhog dives again. The massive underside of Watchpoint Aberdeen lurks like a dark whale in the water as Roadhog swims alongside it. He goes as quickly as he can, mainly because there’s an arm crooked around his neck like it’s trying to strangle him, and then — there. He sees what he’s looking for. He swims toward it, surfaces, and hears an overly dramatic gasp for air just behind his head. And then a few deep breaths, and then a curious noise.

“Do you think they know there’s a giant hole in their boat?” Junkrat says.

Roadhog rolls his eyes. Not a hole — a hangar. A real hangar this time, built into the side of Aberdeen’s hull like a cave in a cliff face. It’s positioned low enough that the water flows into it, right underneath a small system of catwalks. Must be a bay for some kind of boat, then. Nothing here now.

Roadhog paddles into the hangar to the tune of Junkrat’s babbling. He knows he’s just trying to talk to distract himself from the water, from the cold, from the real shitfest they’ve found themselves in, but Roadhog really wishes he’d save it for later. He’s trying to be stealthy here.

“Pretty stupid of ‘em to dump us right next to where we can just get back in,” Junkrat’s saying, and there’s that nervous laugh of his. “I mean, what were they thinking, am I right?”

“Don’t think they expected us to survive.”

“Oh. Well, like I said. Pretty stupid of ‘em.”

Roadhog spots a short ladder leading up to the catwalk, its lowest rungs submerged in water. It’s probably a service ladder, so mechanics or whoever can climb in and out. He swims over to it and without further prompting, Junkrat scrambles for it, his knee prodding into Roadhog’s back and his foot flapping against his head. He utters a warning growl, helps Junkrat up the ladder with a rough shove against his ass. Junkrat titters a bit, can’t quite seem to contain it even as Roadhog climbs up after him.

“How’d you know this was here, anyway?” he asks.

“Thought it might be an aircraft carrier.”

Junkrat frowns, gestures out at the hangar. “Uh, mate, does it look like this place is carryin’ any planes? There ain’t shit here!”

He’s not wrong. This hangar was obviously designed for a small boat rather than any aircraft — maybe some kind of reconnaissance craft or a pilot boat. Whatever it is, it’s not here. It’s a shame. They could have hightailed it out of here.

“Shame there’s nothing in,” Junkrat muses. “Coulda hightailed it outta here.”

Roadhog snorts.

He gives another nervous laugh as Roadhog joins him on the catwalk. He’s laughing but Roadhog can tell by the tension in his shoulders that he’s wound tight. Roadhog’s not feeling particularly spry at the moment either, not after battling the ocean to get here. Hell, they could both use a sit down. They could use a lot more than that.

He feels Junkrat’s eyes on him, searching and prodding, as he moves to sit against the wall, cold water still dripping down his back. Junkrat looks stressed and drowned, hair plastered to his face at odd angles, eyes sore and red from the water, but he doesn’t sit beside him. He just stands there holding onto the rail for support, staring as Roadhog rakes damp hair out of his eyes.

“The hell are you doin’?” Junkrat demands. “This is no time for a kip, we gotta get the fuck outta here.”

Roadhog raises an eyebrow at him. “And how do you suggest we do that?”

“I—” Junkrat bites his lip, runs a hand along his scalp, tugs at his hair a little. “I dunno yet but there’s gotta be something. There’s helicopters, we can… dunno, we can nick one of those.”

Roadhog’s other eyebrow shoots up to match the first.

“Flyin’ a chopper’s probably just like drivin’ your bike, innit? You could do it, no problem.”

“Big problem,” Roadhog mutters.

“Oh, c’mon! You won’t fly to Scotland, you won’t swim to Scotland — Is there anything you _will_ do?”

This isn’t exactly what Roadhog had in mind when he wanted a sit down. Look, he’s tired. He’s been worried sick about this little arsehole for days and just got dumped into the ocean in the middle of the night. He’s sore. He’s frustrated. Even if there was something he could do right now, he’ll function better after he’s had a few minutes to catch his breath. He’s being nice when he pointedly turns his head away and refuses to give Junkrat the light of day.

Junkrat seems to accept this as his answer, a marked “There’s plenty I _will_ do but talking to you isn’t one of them.” He turns away as well, albeit with a loud huff.

For a while only the ocean speaks, in its incessant lapping down below and the mumble of its waves outside. Roadhog will be honest with himself, he doesn’t take his eyes off Junkrat for long. He glances back when he’s sure Junkrat’s not paying attention to him, catches him gnawing on his lip and rocking back and forth a little on one heel.

It’s only been a few days, he knows, but… it’s surreal to see him again. To be this close. To be able to talk to him. He had feared he’d never get the chance to again. He remembers the last time he’d seen Junkrat, beaten down and helpless, and it suddenly doesn’t seem so horrible that he’s back to his restless self. Roadhog can only imagine how being unable to pace must be driving him crazy. He can see it in the drumming of his fingers against the guard rail, the wiggling of his toes. He can’t bare to stand still, quivering all over like he’s about to explode. Roadhog wishes he would just relax, even for a second, because it’s okay, they’re together again, and he isn’t going to let anything else happen to him. Not now, not ever.

Junkrat wheels around suddenly. “Fuck you!”

Roadhog’s brow furrows like a dropped anchor. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me!” His whole body trembles, his eyes alight. “The hell were you thinkin’, going and gettin’ yourself captured like that? And I had to come save _you_?” He gives a nasty scoff. “Some bodyguard you are, mate.”

Unlike anyone else in the world, he’s only encouraged by Roadhog’s silence and hard glare. “Yeah, you heard me! You’re a shit bodyguard. Can’t even watch your own back, let alone mine. I had to look out for myself in there! The hell am I even payin’ you for?”

For the briefest of moments, all the venom fades from his face and leaves him looking small. He mutters, “’Course, I s’pose I can’t pay you no more, can I?” But then the bite is back, and he’s scowling like he never stopped.

“And then you went and turned us in! My treasure! You gave” —his knuckles go white around the rail— “that” —he snarls— “ _bitch_ ” —a flash of crooked teeth— “my bleedin’ treasure!”

“To save you, you little shit,” Roadhog growls.

“And who said I needed savin’? Didn’t need shit from anyone, I was fine on me own. Even escaped once. Nearly. Didn’t need you or anyone else.”

Roadhog feels something dark spill over inside him. His wretched mouth moves on its own.

“Right. And that’s why you kept calling for me.”

Junkrat’s face goes as white as a sheet, his knuckles even whiter. “I,” he croaks, “didn’t. You’re full of shit, y’know that?”

“Not as full as you.”

“Fuck you, mate.”

“Every time the pain became too much you gave up and started callin’ for me because you needed my _help_.”

Junkrat blinks a few times, far too quickly. “What, like you saw?”

“Oh, I saw.”

“How… how much?”

“I saw the needle.”

The way Junkrat’s face contorts is both satisfying and painful to watch. It cycles through fear, fury, shame, and ends on a cringe.

“Oh, I see how it is,” he snaps. “They cut me to ribbons, but not you, big man. They gave you front row fuckin’ seats. They probably thought they wouldn’t be able to find their way to your guts through all that lard!”

“Shut. Up.”

“No — no, y’know what? _You_ shut up. You don’t know what they did to me. I’m all sorts of fucked now — even more than I was before!”

“You look perfectly fine to me,” Roadhog says darkly. Not true, he knows it’s not true, but Christ, his mouth has a mind of its own.

“’Course I do,” Junkrat cries. “These people are the good guys, remember? Bunch of goody two-shoes omnic-lovers. Good guys don’t torture people.” He huffs, tries and fails to cross his arms and that only darkens his frown. “And they definitely don’t leave behind any evidence.”

Wordlessly, Roadhog lifts up his left hand. The bright red tips of his fingers, raw and oozing without their fingernails, glisten sickly in the dim light of the hangar. Junkrat stares like he’s frozen in time…

And then he utterly deflates. All the tension in his posture droops like it weighs something. His shoulders sag. Roadhog feels like he’s looking in a mirror.

“You should see the other guys,” he says lamely as Junkrat crosses the catwalk. A dejected sigh later, Junkrat collapses down next to him, defeated and exhausted, guilt written across his features. He dares to glance over as if it might get him smacked, and he just looks so tired.

“They didn’t beat you up too bad,” he says, “did they?”

“Me?” Roadhog mumbles. “Nah.” Involuntarily, he scratches his arm just below the elbow. He glances over, meets Junkrat’s gaze. “You?”

For a moment they simply look at each other. Then an odd, sickly sort of grin twists Junkrat’s mouth and he giggles — soft and close-mouthed, like he’s trying to hold back vomit.

“I,” he manages eventually, “I think I killed myself with me own dick, mate.”

And then the laughter really begins. It bursts out of him like whistling fireworks, endless and overwhelming like someone had lit the whole batch at once. He kicks his foot in the air, tugs at his hair, chomps down on his knuckles, but it just keeps coming.

Roadhog can’t help but frown. “Jamie,” he murmurs.

Junkrat dives into his huge shoulder. He feels grinning teeth against his skin, feels every shudder reverberate through him. Cold, wet hair sends a chill down his spine.

Then comes a different kind of wetness. Hot and slow, tacky where Junkrat’s face is pressed into him. It doesn’t sound like laughter anymore.

Silently, carefully, _finally_ , Roadhog surrounds him in his arms and pulls him into his lap. Junkrat immediately burrows into his chest, torn apart by ugly sobs that shake his whole body. Strong arms hold him tight, hide him away from the rest of the world. Roadhog is never going to let this boy go.

Eventually, when the shaking calms and the sobs die down into hoarse whimpers, Roadhog tucks Junkrat’s head under his chin. He lets his eyes drift shut for a moment, tilts his head down.

“ _Kia kaha_ ,” he murmurs into his hair, so softly it’s like Junkrat isn’t meant to hear it. But he does, and he looks up with a frown, the last tears suspended in the corners of his eyes.

“Oi, what’s that mean? What’d you just say?”

Roadhog huffs, carefully brushes hair out of Junkrat’s eyes. “Means you’re a loud brat.”

“Gee, what a gentleman.”

“Wipe your damn nose.”

But Roadhog doesn’t let him go, and Junkrat just gives a snotty sniff before resting his head against the warm expanse of his chest.

Abruptly, “I hate this place. Let’s leave.”

“How?” Roadhog says.

Junkrat thinks on it for a moment, and Roadhog feels quick fingers dancing across his stomach.

“You sure you can’t fly a chopper?”

Roadhog groans.

“C’mon, you’re a fast learner! It can’t be that hard, you just — move the sticks, right?”

Roadhog frowns down at him. “The sticks?”

“Yeah! The steery sticks. Y’know.” He reaches out in front of him to grab an imaginary shape, shifts his torso from side to side while making what Roadhog suspects are supposed to be helicopter noises.

“Well,” Junkrat says, “there’s usually two of ‘em, but you get the idea.”

“I don’t want to fly the helicopter. Next idea.”

“We can threaten some other bloke, maybe one of the pilots, get them to fly it.”

Like hell he’s leaving their lives in the fate of some random stooge.

“Next.”

“Okay. I’ll fly it!”

“I thought the goal was to get out alive.”

Junkrat sneers up at him with a fake little laugh. “Pig-faced bastard.”

“Twitchy cunt.”

“Fine. Different plan. We’re in a boat house, ain’t we? You can just boat us home.”

“Do you see any boats?”

Now it’s Junkrat’s turn to groan, and he does so while throwing his head back onto Roadhog’s shoulder. “Mate, what kind of Kiwi are you?”

Roadhog’s not sure what that has to do with there being no boats, let alone what the hell a boat house is.

True, he knows his way around a basic boat. He’s no expert but he’s not a layman either, thanks to his childhood. If they had access to a vessel of some kind, he could, as Junkrat said, “boat them home.” So, first thing’s first. He supposes they need a boat.

“Could wait for this one to come back,” he mutters. “Commandeer it…”

But he realizes fairly quickly that Junkrat isn’t paying attention. He’s staring off into the distance, his eyes glassy and unfocused, a half-smile dawning on his face. It grows into a full grin — he’s slowly lighting up all over. Roadhog’s surprised his hair hasn’t caught fire yet. He guffaws suddenly, and while Roadhog is glad to hear it, the familiar anticipation sets in anyway.

Junkrat twists around in Roadhog’s arms until they’re chest to chest and practically nose to nose.

“Mate,” he says.

“Hmm?”

“Roadhog.”

“What.”

“Hoggo.”

“ _Junkrat_.”

He sputters a laugh. “No, no, listen. We need a boat, you said?”

Roadhog doesn’t think he actually said that part out loud.

“Mate—” His hand flutters across Hog’s chest, his stomach, his arm, too excited to land. He leans in closer, all bright eyes and a hushed voice. “Mate. What are we sittin’ on right now?”

Roadhog stares at him. Frowns. Stares some more. Frowns some more.

“Eh?” Junkrat says, grinning like a loon.

“You are the most volatile person I’ve ever met.”

He gives a delighted giggle. “I know.”

Without waiting for an answer, Junkrat twists around again, out of Roadhog’s arms and onto the cold grating of the catwalk. He faces Hog on his knee and stump and then, oddly, breaks out in a solemn voice.

“Roadhog—”

“What is this?” Roadhog says, frowning.

Junkrat splutters. “I-I’m kneelin’ down here, okay? Don’t interrupt.

“Roadhog,” he begins again, fire still burning bright in his eyes, “Mako, my trusted employee,” —(Roadhog rolls his eyes)— “will you embark with me upon the heist of our lives?”

He offers his hand, even though he sways without it to keep his balance. Roadhog eyes it for a moment, actually taken aback.

This bastard.

This absolutely cheeky piece of shit.

If nothing else, he has to admire him for his audacity.

Roadhog sighs.

Grins.

Gladly takes Junkrat’s hand in his.

 

* * *

 

It’s not hard to sneak back into Watchpoint Aberdeen.

Okay, maybe it is, but only a little.

Junkrat will admit, his main beef is that Roadhog refused to let him walk anywhere — or hop, or crawl. The bastard. Sure, it’s faster and less taxing on him to just hitch a ride on the behemoth’s back, but he wants to help. Can’t very well help when he has to cling to Roadhog’s neck and shoulders like a one-armed koala. Although… it does give him a pretty good view of the action.

“I changed my mind,” Roadhog says as he snaps another guard’s neck. “This is a shit plan.”

“It’s not. You’re lyin’. You love it.”

Okay, so maybe _search every room and hope they find what they’re looking for — oh yeah, and kill everyone they come across_ isn’t Junkrat’s finest work, but it’s pretty good, all things considered. He’s been having a grand old time of it so far and the guards they leave in their wake are all sporting freshly snapped necks. Funny, that’s the one part of the plan Roadhog hasn’t complained about yet.

So they snatch a pitifully low level keycard off some woman’s corpse, use it to ride the elevator up to a more familiar level. The clinical, featureless walls make Junkrat cling a little tighter around Roadhog’s neck and if Roadhog notices, he doesn’t say anything. Just makes a kind of choking noise. Oops.

There’s a doctor or a nurse or whatever the fuck he is further down the hall and Junkrat recognizes the bastard even through his surgical mask.

Or maybe he doesn’t. Point is, he looks like someone who had strapped him into a wheelchair once, and that’s enough.

“Ooh, that one, that one,” Junkrat says, grinning and pointing. “Break his legs!”

Funny. Roadhog doesn’t complain about doing that either. Ha ha.

With one more mangled corpse behind them, they move on. They try to, at least. It turns out Junkrat isn’t the only one who gets lost in this place.

“C’mon, Hog, no time to waste! We gotta get to the — the, uh—”

“Bridge.”

“Right, that. C’mon, move!” He digs his knee into Roadhog’s side, makes him roll his shoulders in a way that almost bucks him off.

“Oi, watch it,” Junkrat tries to say, but Roadhog reaches behind him and clamps a hand down on his face.

“Shh,” he says curtly. He’s standing too still to be playing around.

Junkrat listens.

Someone’s coming.

A body rounds the corner, light and swift, but Roadhog’s faster. He lashes out, wraps thick fingers around a thin throat, and slams it against the wall. Delicate hands fly up to uselessly pry at his fingers. A pale face gapes at them, blue eyes wide. Roadhog rattles out a husky breath. He means to kill her.

“Oi, hold up a sec, Hoggy,” Junkrat says quickly, tugging back on his hair like reigns and earning himself a displeased grunt. He knows he’s going to get smacked for that later.

He leans over Roadhog’s shoulder, grinning smugly at the woman caught in Hog’s grasp. “G’day, doctor,” he says.

Ziegler doesn’t stop trying to loosen the fingers around her throat but some of the shock does manage to leave her eyes. He’s not really sure what replaces it. It’s something serious, though.

“Am I allowed to speak?” she rasps.

“No,” Roadhog snarls.

“Sure,” Junkrat says at the same time.

She frowns, blinks, decides to take her chances.

“I saw you,” she says, “on security. You survived.”

“Got me own personal safety raft” Junkrat says proudly, patting Roadhog across the chest.

“You’re back. How?”

“You got a big fuckin’ door in the side of your boat, mate, how d’you think?”

“Why are you here?”

“Ain’t it obvious? We got some unfinished business to take care of.”

Roadhog grunts. _Can I kill her_ now _?_

“Would be a bit rude, wouldn’t it? We’re in the middle of a conversation here.”

Ziegler frowns gravely, and it somehow adds a decade to her face. “You’re here for N.”

Junkrat splutters, even feels Roadhog’s breath hitch.

“She’s here?” he exclaims.

“Of course she’s here. She runs this place. She is not the type to run it from afar.” Ziegler grimaces up at Roadhog. “Will you let me go now?”

Roadhog seems tempted to just fucking shut her up already so Junkrat gives his hair another little tug.

“You heard the lady. Give her some air.”

Begrudgingly, and only after a few long seconds, Roadhog relinquishes his hold on her throat. She sucks in a grateful breath, fingers floating up to ghost across her neck, but only for a moment.

“Where is she?” Junkrat demands. He can’t keep the urgency out of his voice, and he’s glad Roadhog can’t see the look on his face right now. Tired, grim, maybe a bit haunted. Yeesh. “Where’s N?”

Ziegler’s look could match his. “What do you plan to do with her?”

Junkrat shrugs. “Kill her, steal the whole ship, escape.”

Roadhog reaches back to thwap him — probably not too keen on sharing their master plan with everyone — but Ziegler is still regarding him, and quite oddly now.

“You can’t be serious,” she says.

“Do I look like I’d ever crack a joke?” Junkrat pouts. “Besides, it’s a killer plan. You said so yourself, we shoulda died — so she’ll never expect us.”

“The guards on deck one are armed,” she says. “Pulse rifles and plasma pistols. They will find you. You will be killed.” Her eyes are dark, her voice grim, but Junkrat sees by the worried wringing of her hands that this isn’t a threat — it’s a warning.

And as unfortunate as it is, she’s right. He doesn’t have his frag launcher, Roadhog doesn’t have his gun and hook. Sure, Roadie’s pretty good at smashing faces with his bare hands, but a whole squad of guys with pulse rifles could easily fuck both of them right up. She’s right. They’ll be killed.

But then again, death doesn’t seem to work the way it should on this ship.

“Right,” Junkrat says. “About that…” He leans conspiratorially over Roadhog’s shoulder. “I’ve been seein’ this new doctor, see, and she’s not bad. Kinda pasty, kinda needs to get her shit together, but she seems to know what she’s gabbin’ about, y’know? She’s seen me through some nasty stuff.” His grin turns sly. “And she tells me I’m quite resilient. Unkillable, even. But of course, I say that’s all thanks to her.”

Ziegler’s eyes widen just barely, just for a moment.

“You,” she utters, “are asking quite the thing from me.”

“Who, me? Asking? Dunno what you’re talkin’ about, was only tellin’ you about my doctor.”

They trade stares for a moment that seems to last an eternity, both of their faces grim. Both tired. Tired of being afraid.

Ziegler swallows loudly. “Well,” she says, “your doctor sounds like a fool.” She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, wraps her arms around her middle. “But a fool that will have your back.”

Junkrat grins. “I like to think so.”

Roadhog grunts again and Junkrat scowls down at his big dumb head.

“Don’t you fuckin’ dare. C’mon, we’re outta here.”

But before they can go, Ziegler reaches into her pocket.

“Wait,” she says, as if she just remembered. “You will need this to access the bridge.” She offers him something, a flat little rectangle that makes his eyes light up. He snatches it away, holds it like it’s made of gold.

“Do not lose it.”

He nods solemnly. “I won’t.” He has no pockets so he just keeps the keycard grasped safely in his hand while she gives them quick directions. Apparently, there’s an elevator to deck one just around a few corners. Who knew?

“See ya soon, doc,” Junkrat says.

She offers him a weary smile. “I hope it will not come to that.”

They part ways, Ziegler sweeping off with a tablet in her hands and Roadhog marching in the opposite direction, Junkrat securely latched around his neck. The elevator’s easy enough to find and while they’re waiting for it to arrive, Roadhog finally glances over his shoulder.

“The hell was that about?” he mutters.

“Oh, nothing, just thought I’d sign us up for some health insurance.”

“Yeah? What’s it cover?”

Junkrat can’t stifle the giggle that bursts out of him and drowns out the _ding_ of the arriving elevator.

“Everything!”

 

* * *

 

Deck one is open to the night, and the sky is still home to the moon and her stars. The cold ocean air bites at their bare chests as they stalk the deck, moving as quietly as a large man wearing another man like a backpack can move. Honestly, it’s a miracle this place is understaffed. They only have to dodge around a few armed guards on their way to the bridge. Each security camera they pass is mysteriously turned away. Junkrat makes a note to thank his doctor later.

Ziegler’s keycard gets them onto the bridge. The first thing Junkrat notices is the window stretched far across the walls like a three-sided windshield, boasting a perfect view of the endless ocean. Consoles line the walls underneath, dotted with blinking lights and wobbling gauges. There’s some kind of navigational table in the center of the room that keeps throwing holographic maps into the air and making the room glow cyan. Overall, the bridge is big enough to fit a dozen crew members.

But today, only one person is manning her station. She stands against the far window, her back to them. The light from the holograms makes her silver suit glow a neon blue, but the fabric doesn’t shimmer. It doesn’t flicker in and out. It’s matte. Mute. Junkrat’s not sure if he wants to jump for joy or out the window.

N doesn’t turn at the sound of the door sliding open. “What is it?” she says flatly, eyes glued to the monitor in front of her.

Junkrat cracks a manic grin. He can’t help himself. “Got a delivery here for someone named N,” he says.

She whips around. Her face goes slack, her eyes wide and stricken, and he feels a shiver run down Roadhog’s spine. Easy there.

Her mouth opens, closes, opens again, and she’s fucking speechless, God, this is too good to be true. The light is actually casting shadows on her face, making her look gaunt, and she reaches back to steady herself against the console, touching it, because she’s _real_ , she’s _here_.

And what do you know? They’re here too.

“You,” is all she manages to say.

“What, not happy to see us?” Junkrat says. He’s grinning but deep down, his heart is pounding. He keeps his trembling fingers clamped tightly around Roadhog’s shoulder. “You didn’t think we’d forget about you, surely.”

She says nothing. He wonders if she’s ever been this scared before.

“My,” he says, “how the tables have turned.”

“You want to kill me, I suppose,” she says. It’s actually kind of impressive how she manages to keep her voice so level.

“That’s putting it a bit mildly but yeah, you get the idea.”

Her eyes narrow. “And what, exactly, do you think that will accomplish?”

“Why’s everything gotta accomplish something, eh? You ever heard of a little concept called fun? ‘Cause me and Roadie here — we love to have ourselves some fun.”

N’s eyes flick down to Roadhog suddenly and whatever she sees in his face makes the blood drain from her face.

“No, no, no, don’t you worry about Roadhog.” Junkrat scowls at her. “It’s me you should be afraid of.”

Roadhog is quivering like an idle engine beneath him, hands flexing. Not going to be able to hold himself back much longer. Junkrat won’t make him. He slides off his back and onto the floor, pats the side of his stomach on the way down.

“Have at her, big guy.”

Roadhog’s off like a fucking rocket. Junkrat thinks he feels the floor rattle a little with his every step. Christ, he’s probably going to snap her neck right away, isn’t he?

“Oi,” he calls. “Leave some for me!”

For all the terror in N’s eyes, she doesn’t hesitate. She’s quick on her feet, dodging around to the opposite side of the navigation table. It’s too wide for Roadhog to reach across, he doesn’t try. Maybe he should’ve. She reaches into the inner folds of her jacket while Roadhog is circling around like an animal on the hunt. She pulls out something cold, dark, and metal in her hands. She aims it at Roadhog.

Junkrat’s heart threatens to burst and he moves without thinking. A hop, a leap. He lunges at N with his face, teeth bared in a keening snarl. His jaw clamps down on her wrist and draws a hiss out of her. He’s big — too big for her to weather — and his weight bowls her down to the ground along with him. The gun slips from her grasp and he nudges it desperately away with a floundering kick.

He’s biting down so hard his jaw hurts. He tastes carnage, feels blood dribbling from his lips like drool, but he doesn’t let go. A fist strikes his head but he doesn’t let go. His teeth are dug in like the serrations of a saw. He bites. He shakes his head like a mangy dog, tearing the skin and making her snarl, digging him in deeper. He’ll bite her fucking hand off.

N’s other hand disappears again, dives into the pocket of her pants. Comes back, gives a flick, and out comes a combat knife, its blade bright blue in the light of the navigation table. The devil is in her eyes. Junkrat stops breathing, staring and still. She grips the knife in her fist, coils it back behind her head—

A massive hand closes around her forearm. Pulls.

There’s a loud pop, a crack, a miserable shriek.

Roadhog fucking _pulls_.

N’s arm is torn from her body with the sickly sound of tearing flesh. Junkrat stares, her wrist falling from his slack mouth as she screams. As she writhes beside him. The flame is gone from her eyes. They’ve become just as dull as her suit.

Roadhog huffs out a wheeze, throws the disembodied arm over his shoulder and ignores the blood it spits across him. Junkrat hears it land somewhere beyond with a sad, limp splatter. The temptation to grin makes the bloodied corners of his mouth twitch.

Roadhog stares down at N’s writhing body, at the gnashed, teeth-marked hand that grasps at the ragged remains of her shoulder. Something dark creeps behind the brown of his eyes, touches his eyebrows and makes them furrow deeply.

He says to her in a dangerously low rumble, “Now you know.”

Junkrat gives her a moment to respond. She doesn’t, unsurprisingly, and he cocks an eyebrow at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Roadhog just crosses his arms and grunts.

For a moment, they just watch. N wrangles in her screaming, gets by on groans through gritted teeth. Roadhog’s still watching her, eyebrows knitted together, arms crossed. Junkrat himself is at a bit of a loss, oddly enough. He’d come here for revenge — yes, and for the ship, but the revenge had been the real meat of the plan. And now he’s had it! But… it doesn’t feel done. Something’s still niggling in his guts like a worm. Something’s missing.

A wet, ragged voice interrupts his thoughts, make his eyes focus again. He glances down at N, who is watching him with daggers for eyes.

“Sorry?” he says genially. “Care to repeat that?”

“The omnicardium,” she says, “isn’t here.”

Junkrat frowns. “The what? Oh! No worries, mate. We’re not here for that old thing anyway.”

She grimaces. “Not the Heart?”

“Nope. Not the Heart.”

But he really should find out where that thing’s gone to. He owes it to Roadhog, and — oh. Right. That explains the stupid little worm eating through him from the inside out. The Heart’s gone and soon, Roadhog will be too. All because of the blasted… fucking… Heart…

He perks up suddenly. He can feel Roadhog eyeing the crooked grin that’s just spread across his face.

“Why,” Junkrat says with a chuckle, “would I be here for that?” He rises to his knee, starts a casual crawl away from her. “Thought we made a deal, you and I.”

He doesn’t go far. Reaches for the small bladed thing that had fallen nearby. He holds the knife up to his face, examining its blade, and sees his own teeth in the reflection.

“Thought you were a woman of business.”

When he looks back, the daggers in her eyes are dull.

He returns to her side. She can barely manage to struggle as he straddles her twitching body, submerging his knee in the thick pool of her blood.

“G’day,” he says with a smile, as if they’ve just met for lunch. “You comfy down there?”

“You people,” she rasps, “are monsters.”

That manages to draw a laugh out of him. He feels a tear creep out of his eye and he quickly shoulders it away.

“You never told me you had jokes!”

She glares at him. He doesn’t particularly care for that, does he?

“Roadhog,” he says. “Help me with these buttons.”

Roadhog crouches down beside him without a word but his eyes are questioning as he grabs her jacket by the lapels and simply yanks the thing apart. Buttons pop and go flying, and for some reason that’s the thing that makes N wince. He does the same with the dark dress shirt underneath, strips her bare until the rising and falling expanse of her chest is out in the open. Her glare doesn’t let up, but it’s tinged with fear.

Junkrat wiggles the knife in his fingers. Grins.

“Anyway,” he says. “I think you owe me a little something.”

He plunges the knife into her chest, just below the jugular. She cries out. Her legs thrash beneath his hips. Her hand flails toward him but Roadhog quickly pins it to the floor.

Junkrat grips the knife in a trembling hand, drawing it in and out of her in a jagged line along her sternum. _Just like cuttin’ a steak_ , he tells himself, utters a giggle.

But it’s not. It’s really not.

He’s only watching as his hand pries the flaps of her skin back of its own accord. As the knife cuts through the muscle of N’s diaphragm and she utters her last choked gasp.

Junkrat tosses the knife aside and after only a moment’s hesitation that he hopes no one noticed, dives into the gore of her. His hand shakes like a leaf as it wipes blood away, as it digs into the slit he carved into her flesh and muscle. Through the diaphragm, under the sternum. N has gone still beneath him, quiet save for the dying, breathless noises that leave her mouth. He presses himself to hurry — wants her to be alive for this.

He reaches, reaches, searching with blood-slick fingers until they brush against something hot and thick — something fluttering. He grins but it doesn’t reach his eyes. He closes his fingers around the twitching mass.

“My heart for yours,” he says. “Now that’s a fair trade, innit? Seein’ as how you didn’t actually pay me.”

He steels himself.

He yanks the beating thing right out of her chest.

It doesn’t come easily. He has to tug it through a tight web of guts. Vessels pop, oozing blood in a frantic rhythm. Ribs poke into his wrist like bony fingers.

Then it’s out and sagging in his palm, torn veins and arteries hanging off it like vines. He stares down at the body without really seeing it. Hears a voice, high and venomous, come from his mouth.

“Might not wanna call Angela in here to fix you up. If she does, I’ll just have to gut you again” —he squeezes the heart, blood gushing through his fingers— “and again” —another squeeze, a sickly squelch— “and _again_. Maybe forever.”

He lets the heart sit in his hand, nothing more than a wilting sack of meat now. Beneath him, N is perfectly still, her mouth agape and glassy eyes skyward. He’s not sure when she died. He doesn’t really know if he cares. He glares down at her.

“Our ship now, boys.”

Junkrat’s not sure what happens next. He thinks he just sits there for a while, staring down at N but not truly looking at her. He thinks he’s splattered with blood in places he shouldn’t be. He forgets that Roadhog is even there until the guy shifts on his feet. It brings Junkrat back to the real world and now he can feel the tension in the air, thick like a humid coastal mist. Roadhog’s watching him, brow furrowed, concern written plainly on his face. Junkrat doesn’t want to see it. He clears his throat, utters a hoarse laugh. Realizes he still has N’s clammy heart gripped in his fingers.

He hurriedly drops it with a noise of disgust, pretends he doesn’t hear the wet slap it makes when it hits the floor. He feels cold suddenly.

“Oi,” he says, looking up at Roadhog and managing a faint smile. “Help me up, you big goon.”

He does so without hesitation. Big hands on his back and elbow, helping him to stand — still there even when he’s on his foot, fingers twitching like they want to touch all of him all at once but don’t want to let him go. They settle for rubbing a gentle shape into the small of his back.

Roadhog helps him over to the navigation table and he doesn’t really know what to say. He takes a seat atop it, lighting up his back and thighs in a vivid cyan glow, and Roadhog sits beside him, still caressing his back. Protective bastard. It makes him want to chuckle but he can’t quite find the strength.

After a moment, Roadhog glances at him. “That sounded a little personal.”

“Wasn’t,” Junkrat says, sniffs. Won’t look at him. “Was strictly business.”

He can imagine the look on Roadhog’s face — the eyebrow, the skeptical frown. Another beat of silence passes.

“Was kind of hot,” Roadhog says, and that, finally, makes Junkrat laugh.

“What, only a little?” he says, offers him a weak smile. But it wanes quickly and he stares down at his foot instead of anywhere else.

More silence. Roadhog’s specialty. But he’s trying, Junkrat knows he is. That only makes him feel worse.

“You okay?”

“’Course. Right as rain, I am. We just made the world a better place, why wouldn’t I be okay?”

But he can’t quite convince even himself of that, can he? He had his revenge. It’s over. He won. But N is dead and the Heart is gone and he still feels like he’s lost it all. Best to just get it over with then. He looks up at Roadhog, somehow manages to keep the despair out of his voice.

“What now?”

Roadhog frowns. “What d’you mean? This was your plan.”

“Not _now_ now, I mean…” He gnaws on his lip and it tastes like someone else’s blood. “After we ride this thing to shore.”

“Oh. Dunno.”

Roadhog thinks, and the silence kills him.

“Back to the motel.”

Of course. To get their things back.

“Yeah, but… _after_.”

But the stupid bastard still doesn’t get it.

“You tell me, boss,” he says, and it makes Junkrat want to rip out his hair.

“I ain’t your boss no more!” he exclaims. “I don’t have the Heart, I can’t pay you. The deal’s off.”

Roadhog gives him one of _those_ looks, the pinched nose and sliver of teeth that say _Is that what this is about?_ Infuriatingly, he doesn’t say anything in response. He just shrugs, and Junkrat scowls.

“Don’t you shrug at me, you porky bastard. Say somethin’. You’re killin’ me over here.”

Another shrug. “Fine.”

But that’s it, and Junkrat really wants to slap him.

“ _Fine_? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means fine,” Roadhog says, and looks squarely at him. “We’ll figure something out.”

“But there’s nothing to figure out! The one thing that made me worth a dime is gone and — and I don’t even need you anymore! Nobody’s gonna come after me if they don’t get a chance at my treasure. Just you wait, once I spread the word that I don’t have it no more, no one’s gonna give a toss about me.”

“You think anyone’s going to believe it’s gone?”

“Maybe… maybe the doc can get the word out.”

Roadhog snorts derisively. “I can think of at least ten blokes who’d come after you just to hear you scream, treasure or no.”

Junkrat deflates. “What do you want from me?” he asks — tired. So tired.

“Fifty fifty.”

“But—”

“Fifty,” Roadhog demands, “fifty. That was the deal.”

“But—”

One hard look and he snaps his mouth shut.

Roadhog is truly baffling sometimes. A man with a love for money and a bigger love for risk and adventure. A man who’d had the grandest treasure in the world right at his fingertips, the technology to create mechanical life — and he had pushed it away. Why? Why would he do that? If money has lost its value then what could he possibly want?

Junkrat blinks. Roadhog returned to his feet, has been gazing down at Junkrat with a thoughtful look in his eyes. It was the reaching out of his hand that caught Junkrat’s attention, palm up and fingers splayed. Inviting.

“Could sail to New Zealand,” Roadhog mutters. “Show you where I grew up.”

At Junkrat’s silence, he continues.

“Shit little town in the North Island. Good beaches. Good fish. We’d be old men by the time we got there, but we could do it.”

“That’s,” Junkrat says lamely. “That’s a rubbish idea, mate. Would make more sense to take a plane from Scotland.”

Roadhog shrugs. “You’re the brains.”

“And you’re the brawn,” Junkrat says without thinking. It makes him falter, makes him stare down at that open hand in front of him.

The two of them, brains and brawn. A team. A partnership. Two halves of a whole.

Fifty fifty.

Oh.

_Oh._

A grin begins to bloom on Junkrat’s face, as slow and bright as a sunrise. “Fifty fifty,” he says, and it’s not a question.

Roadhog grunts in agreement.

Junkrat takes his hand. Blood smears, shared between their palms.

Right. A heart for a heart. That’s a fair trade, isn’t it?

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and that's the end! thank you soooo much to everyone who's read, left kudos, and commented, this fic is for all of you delightful fuckers <333
> 
> special shoutout to luke for being the most supportive, encouraging bastard in the world and staying up late to write with me, i love you buddy!!!
> 
> i hope you all enjoyed, and i'll hopefully see you all again with something new after nanowrimo season is over... ;)

**Author's Note:**

> octonart.tumblr.com


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